Application development
PHP and Laravel, Node.js, Python and React: new builds, and the less glamorous work of making an existing codebase safe to change again.
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Hey, I'm Irfan
Web developer & server engineer
I build web applications and look after the infrastructure underneath them. The same person for the code and the server it runs on.
What I do
Two halves of the same job
Most problems with a website sit on the boundary between the application and the machine it runs on. A page is slow: is that the query, the PHP configuration, or the disk? Email stopped arriving: is that the code, the DNS, or the server's reputation? When those are two separate people, that boundary is where things stall.
I work on both sides of it. That means fewer handovers, and it usually means the actual cause gets found rather than worked around.
Servers & hosting
Linux administration, nginx and Apache, cPanel and WHM, migrations, backups and the monitoring that means you hear about a problem before your customers do.
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AI & automation
Language models applied to real workflows, with evaluation, cost control, scoped permissions and a human in the loop where it matters.
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Performance & care
Core Web Vitals, technical SEO, malware recovery and ongoing maintenance. The work that keeps a site fast, findable and online.
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Services
Twenty-two things I am asked for most
Grouped by what they solve rather than by technology. Each page says what is included, how I work and what it will not fix.
Web & Application Development
PHP Development
Custom PHP applications, plus rescue work on legacy codebases that still run the business.
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Laravel Development
Laravel applications built the boring way, queues, tests, migrations and a deploy that works.
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Node.js Development
Node services, APIs and real-time features, plus the process management that keeps them up.
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Python Development
FastAPI and Django services, data pipelines, and the automation scripts that quietly save hours.
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React & Frontend Development
Accessible, fast React interfaces, and the plain HTML and CSS underneath that make them work.
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WordPress Development
Custom themes and plugins, and rescuing sites buried under thirty conflicting plugins.
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API Design & Development
APIs other developers can actually use, documented, versioned, and predictable when things fail.
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Servers, Hosting & DevOps
Linux Server Management
Setting up, tuning and looking after Ubuntu, Debian, AlmaLinux and CentOS servers.
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cPanel & WHM Management
Account setup, resource limits, email deliverability and the WHM settings that matter.
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Server & Website Migration
Moving hosts without the downtime, the broken email, or the week of mysterious 404s.
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Server Security & Hardening
Reducing the attack surface, then making sure you would actually notice a breach.
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DevOps & CI/CD
Deployments that are boring: automated, reversible, and identical every time.
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Cloud Hosting & VPS Setup
Choosing the right size box on the right provider, and configuring it so it stays affordable.
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Email & DNS Configuration
DNS records that resolve, and business email that reaches the inbox instead of the spam folder.
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AI & Automation
AI Development
Applied AI features inside real products, with evaluation, cost control and a fallback path.
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AI Agents & Workflow Automation
Automating multi-step work with tool-using agents, with limits, logging and a human in the loop.
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LLM & API Integration
Wiring language models into an existing product without destabilising it.
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Chatbot Development
Support and sales assistants grounded in your own content, that hand over cleanly when stuck.
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Performance, Security & Care
Website Speed Optimization
Finding the real bottleneck rather than installing another caching plugin.
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Technical SEO
The engineering side of search: crawlability, indexing, structured data and site architecture.
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Malware Removal & Site Recovery
Cleaning a hacked site, closing the way in, and getting the warnings lifted.
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Website Maintenance & Support
Ongoing updates, backups, monitoring and a person to call, for sites that need to stay up.
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Approach
How I work
Four things that hold whether the job is a one-day fix or a six-month build.
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Diagnose before quoting
I read the code and look at the server before giving a number. An estimate made without that is a guess, and guesses are how projects end up costing double.
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Say what will not work
If a request is the wrong solution, or a cheaper option exists, you will hear it. That occasionally costs me work, and it is still the right way round.
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Ship in reviewable pieces
Small releases rather than a big reveal. Problems are easier to trace and cheaper to reverse when the change was small.
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Leave it documented
Setup steps, environment variables, cron entries and known quirks written down. You should never be locked into working with me by a lack of information.
Writing
Notes from the work
Things that came up often enough to be worth writing down properly.
Laravel queues in production: supervision, retries and the failures you never see
Queues are the part of a Laravel app most likely to be silently broken in production, because when they fail, nothing visibly breaks.
LaravelPHPQueues
Building AI agents that cannot run away: caps, scopes and audit logs
The gap between an agent demo and something you can put in front of your business is not model quality. It is the constraints around the loop.
AI AgentsClaude APIAutomation
Making a React site rank: prerendering, Core Web Vitals and structured data
React does not prevent a site from ranking. Shipping an empty div and hoping the crawler renders it does. The fix is straightforward and largely a build-time concern.
ReactSEOCore Web Vitals