If your site is slow, fragile, hard to edit, or no longer reflects the quality of your business, that is the work I do. Custom WordPress and WooCommerce development, store builds, and bespoke applications when an off-the-shelf plugin stack stops being enough.
I am not an agency and I do not pretend to be one. You get one developer who is accountable for the outcome, plus specialists brought in by name when a project genuinely needs them.
Most agency sites show award badges. Here is a list of things you can click and confirm yourself, right now.
My name appears in the WordPress 7.1 release credits when 7.1 ships on 19 August 2026.
I would rather be genuinely good at a short list than passable at a long one. If your project needs something outside this list, I will tell you, and I will tell you who to ask instead.
Custom themes and plugins written properly, against WordPress coding standards. Rescues of slow or broken sites, speed work, and builds that your team can actually edit without breaking.
Why it matters: a site nobody can safely edit is a site that quietly stops being updated. WordPress developmentStore builds, checkout and payment work, invoicing, subscriptions and migrations. I have shipped 20+ WooCommerce and Shopify stores, and I maintain a WooCommerce invoicing plugin on wordpress.org.
Why it matters: in a store, every second of load time and every extra checkout field costs real money. Discuss your storeCustom Liquid theme development, tailored storefronts, and checkout journeys built to convert rather than just to look current. Migrations in and out of Shopify when the platform is the problem.
Why it matters: the right platform should get out of the way of selling. Shopify developmentBespoke systems in PHP, Laravel and React when a workflow needs its own tool: dashboards, internal systems, client portals, and desktop utilities built with Electron.
Why it matters: the right internal tool removes work permanently instead of shifting it. Custom applicationsAnyone can put a nice image on a portfolio page. These are shipped products with public source code and public version histories. Read them, run them, judge the standard for yourself.
Invoices, credit notes, packing slips, partial payments and deposits, plus client e-signature acceptance. Around 7,800 lines, built by refactoring a plugin I had been running internally for client stores.
View on wordpress.orgThree modes with correct HTTP status codes, ten templates, a form builder with CSV export, countdown finish actions, scheduled switching, and access control by role, user, IP range or bypass link.
View on wordpress.orgA local browser-profile manager with a proxy pool and spreadsheet import, for people running many isolated sessions. Open source, 200+ commits of public history.
View on GitHubA Manifest V3 screen recorder published on the Chrome Web Store. Small, single-purpose, and a fair sample of how I handle browser APIs and extension permissions.
View on GitHubThe name SoftGlaze describes the standard I try to hold work to.
“Soft” is clarity, usability and a smooth experience for the person using the site. “Glaze” is the finish: refinement, presentation, and the last layer of polish that makes a brand look considered.
Together they describe the approach: solid engineering underneath, a refined experience on top. Technically sound, commercially useful, easy to trust.
Visitors scan. They compare instantly. They read quality, clarity, speed and tone in seconds, and most of them never tell you what put them off.
In a market full of near-identical, AI-generated pages, being specific and verifiable is the advantage that is actually hard to copy.
Businesses were paying for websites, content and marketing, and the result still felt fragmented. A site looked decent but did not convert. Development was finished, but nobody in the business could maintain it. The invoice was paid and the underlying problem was still there.
So I kept the studio deliberately small. Fewer projects at once, one person who understands the whole build, and no layer of account management between you and the person making decisions about your code.
You are buying code you are not trapped by: a site your team can edit, a stack a future developer can pick up without a rewrite, and documentation that means the knowledge does not live only in my head.
You are also buying an honest read on your project. If what you are asking for is a bad idea, or cheaper to solve another way, I will say so before you spend the money.
I take on a limited number of projects at a time, so nothing is deprioritised because a bigger client called. If I cannot give a project proper attention, I say so instead of taking the deposit.
My standing rule, from core contribution work: never report a result without confirming the code was actually running. It is why my bug reports get accepted, and it is how I handle your project too.
I use AI heavily and I am not shy about it. What matters is what happens next: every output gets checked against a running system before it reaches you. I will tell you exactly where it was used.
Contributing to WordPress core means my code gets reviewed by people with no reason to be kind about it. That review habit does not switch off when I work on client projects.
Source, credentials, hosting and documentation are yours. No proprietary framework you can only maintain by paying me. Walking away should always be an option you have.
PHP and WordPress first, then WooCommerce, Shopify with Liquid, Laravel, React, and Electron for desktop tools. I also build Chrome extensions. That list is short on purpose: it is what I can support properly a year after launch.
AI is part of my daily workflow, used for speed and coverage rather than for judgement. Nothing goes into a report or a release until I have watched it run.
“The right stack is the one that solves the problem and that someone can still maintain later.”Buyers do not read a site in depth. They scan for quiet signals in the design, the speed, the wording and the specifics, and they answer four questions before they contact anyone.
The whole point of the record further up this page is that you can answer question three in about thirty seconds.
We go through your business, your goals, your audience, and where the current site is underperforming. I ask a lot of questions here so there are fewer surprises later.
You get a written scope with what is included, what is not, and a fixed price or a clear rate. If I think the budget is better spent differently, this is where I say so.
Structure, interface and words are shaped together, because a layout that fights the copy makes both weaker.
Everything is built and tested on a staging site you can log into and watch progress on. No black box, no big reveal at the end.
Launch, then documentation and a walkthrough so your team can run the site. Every credential and every repository is transferred to you.
A support window after launch, then a maintenance plan if you want one. Optional, never a condition of the build.
A faster site. A checkout that loses fewer people. A team that can publish without asking a developer. A codebase the next person can read. Fewer things quietly breaking.
I do not publish percentage uplift figures, because I cannot prove the ones I would have to attribute to my work alone, and a number I cannot prove is worth nothing to you.
Both of my plugins are new on wordpress.org and I am collecting the first honest reviews now. When testimonials appear on this page, they will have a real name, a real company and a link attached to each one.
Until then, the record further up the page is the evidence: public commits, published plugins, and source code you can read without asking me for anything.
I do. When a project needs a designer, a copywriter or a second developer, I bring in specialists I have worked with for years, and I tell you who they are and what they are doing before they start. Nobody is presented as an in-house team member when they are not.
A fair question, and the honest answer is that this is the real trade-off of hiring a small studio. I manage it by using standard technology with no proprietary lock-in, keeping code in a repository you own, and writing documentation as I go. If I disappeared tomorrow, another WordPress developer could pick your project up without a rewrite.
Yes, heavily, and I would rather tell you that than have you wonder. It makes me considerably faster. What does not change is the verification: nothing ships until I have watched it run in the actual environment. That habit comes from WordPress core testing, where an unverified claim costs you your credibility once.
It depends on scope, and I will not pretend otherwise with a fake starting price. Tell me what you need and you get a written quote with a fixed price or a clear rate, plus what is excluded. If your budget does not fit the work, I will tell you that instead of scoping something that will disappoint you.
Multan, Punjab, Pakistan, on UTC+5. I work evenings and nights local time, which overlaps the UK and European working day and the US morning. I aim to reply to new enquiries within an hour during my working hours, and to support requests within 24 hours.
Yes, and I would encourage it. Both plugins are published on wordpress.org with full source, my core contributions are on Trac under the username softglaze, and my repositories are on GitHub. Very few developers at any price will hand you that much to inspect up front.
A short message is enough to start. If it is not a good fit, I will say so quickly and point you somewhere better.
A small WordPress development studio run by Azhar Ali in Multan, Punjab, Pakistan. Custom WordPress and WooCommerce development, Shopify builds, and bespoke web applications.
Every claim on this page can be checked. Start here.
