
Pāvels Ivanovs
Verified Expert in Engineering
WordPress Developer
Riga, Latvia
Toptal member since July 7, 2021
Pāvels Ivanovs is a senior full-stack developer with solid expertise in debugging and resolving complex issues. He has been a core developer for two top-rated WordPress builders, Visual Composer, and WPBakery, making significant contributions to their development. With a deep understanding of WordPress and proficiency in technologies/frameworks like Laravel, JavaScript, PHP, and CI/CD, Pāvels consistently delivers high-quality solutions. He is an expert in custom plugin development.
Portfolio
Experience
- WordPress - 12 years
- PHP - 12 years
- JavaScript - 11 years
- Xdebug - 9 years
- Laravel - 8 years
- WordPress Plugins - 8 years
- PHPUnit - 7 years
- Webpack - 5 years
Preferred Environment
Ubuntu Linux, PhpStorm, Visual Studio Code (VS Code), PHP, Laravel, WordPress, CI/CD Pipelines, APIs, JavaScript
The most amazing...
...thingt was working as the core developer of WPBakery Page Builder, which is number one in CodeCanyon's marketplace and runs more than a million websites.
Work Experience
Front-end Developer
Epic Alaska LLC
- Rebuilt Epic Alaska Tours from the ground up by migrating the website from IONOS to a custom WordPress Bedrock stack with Tailwind CSS, delivering a redesigned 10+ page experience covering 6 core tour offerings, FAQs, gallery, and contact flows.
- Designed and implemented a custom booking system by integrating Viator with Amelia, streamlining tour reservation workflows across direct website traffic and third-party booking channels based on a unified operational setup.
- Developed reusable content components, design systems, and backup logic to support scalable content management, easier updates, and more reliable site maintenance for a tourism business with multiple tour detail pages and booking entry points.
- Created the full visual design, custom content modules, and site maintenance infrastructure, improving brand presentation, editor flexibility, and long-term reliability through structured backups and modular WordPress development.
Software Engineer
Italist
- Applied new design changes by integrating new design elements to enhance user experience and visual appeal.
- Integrated GraphQL API to support dynamic rendering of the newly implemented design elements.
- Conducted a comprehensive system audit, identifying bottlenecks and proposing actionable performance improvements to optimize site efficiency.
- Resolved multiple issues and bugs, improving site functionality and ensuring a smoother user experience.
Senior WordPress Developer
Woot Marketing Limited
- Developed more than three sites, improved the code quality of existing products, and introduced continuous integration and multiple bug fixes over a short period.
- Improved code quality and fixed multiple bugs using profiling and debugging tools.
- Refactored the current product codebase to keep up with industry standards and excellent performance.
- Moved products to PHP 8.1 for better maintenance and performance.
- Set up the Git server for websites to allow version control.
Senior Full-stack Developer
Visual Composer
- Released 50+ significant releases. Made framework, tests, and infrastructure. Developed over 1,000 features that led the company to be among the top five website builders compared to competitors.
- Improved the support system and fixed multiple issues. Earned nearly 100 five-star reviews throughout one year and aimed to receive a five-star average on the WordPress.org platform.
- Introduced continuous automated integration and continuous deployment with monthly release publishing, which allowed the company to reach 300,000 downloads in 2020-2023 and is increasing.
Senior WordPress Developer
Woot Marketing Limited
- Developed over 20 custom WordPress websites with complex affiliate marketing logic, seamlessly integrating custom themes and plugins to enhance user experience and drive conversions.
- Resolved numerous persistent issues in legacy projects, improving site performance, stability, and user experience across multiple domains.
- Designed and deployed a Git version control for legacy projects and implemented an automated deployment pipeline.
- Integrated multiple APIs, including payment gateways, analytics platforms, and third-party services, to extend functionality and improve user interactivity.
- Implemented a reusable core WordPress theme and versatile plugins, enabling streamlined deployment and consistency across multiple websites.
Senior Full-stack developer
Mogo Finance
- Worked as a senior web developer. Developed the Mogo finance website on a budget of more than $15,000.
- Most used technologies: Cloudflare, PHP, WordPress, JavaScript, React, Cypress, and E2E testing.
- Performed unit and visual testing for high-quality UI. Implemented optimized back-end infrastructure with server-side caching and proxy caching (Cloudflare).
Senior Full-stack Developer
WPBakery
- Implemented more than 300 features that led the company to the no. 1 place in the CodeCanyon Envato marketplace in the plugins category.
- Implemented unit tests with high coverage that gave no hotfixes for around two years.
- Implemented automated continuous integration with release building and testing that ensured a stable mainline and improved our codebase.
Back-end Developer
AmberPhone
- Developed the API back-end infrastructure for mobile applications as a full-stack web developer.
- Developed the API and computing logic for a government educational application for safe driving. Budget: >$20,000.
- Developed the API and web app for the Sakret Baltic app. Budget: >$2,000.
- Developed the API and web app for Visit Tukums app, a government app for city information. Budget: >$10,000.
- Developed the API for Summer Sound, an early summer music festival. Budget: >$5,000.
- Developed the API and web app for SkyGarden, a real estate products listing app. Budget: >$10,000.
- Implemented a framework for quick back-end API development named AmberKit that was used on most company projects. It was covered by unit tests. Budget: >$20,000.
Experience
Maria Photo | Custom CMS, Multilingual Website, and S3 Gallery Platform
https://mariaphoto.lv/My work included optimizing the website for strong performance and search visibility through caching, SEO-focused structure, and Google Tag Manager integration for tracking and analytics. The final result was a fast, polished, and highly maintainable portfolio platform that supports business growth, streamlined content updates, and a premium client-facing presentation.
AI Lifting Solutions | SPA Website Design and Front-end Development
https://www.ailiftingsolutions.co.uk/I implemented the full visual design and site structure, including service presentations, credibility-driven experience blocks, image sections, contact call-to-action elements, and quote/request flows. The final result was a modern SPA that made the business easier to present, easier to navigate, and better aligned with the client’s professional positioning and sales goals.
Epic Alaska Tours | WordPress Rebuild, Design, and Booking Integration
https://www.epicalaskatours.com/I created the full visual design, custom content modules, and site maintenance infrastructure, improving brand presentation, editor flexibility, and long-term reliability through structured backups and modular WordPress development.
UK-based Face Massage Website Development
https://www.elenafatikhova.co.uk/ACHIEVEMENTS
• Achieved a Google PageSpeed ranking of 99+, ensuring lightning-fast load times and an exceptional user experience.
• Utilized Sage, an advanced WordPress starter theme with Blade templating, to create a clean, modular, and maintainable front-end.
• Implemented Bedrock to structure the WordPress environment securely, with efficient dependency management through Composer.
• Designed a fully responsive and visually appealing site using Tailwind CSS, ensuring seamless usability across all devices.
The website includes robust functionality for managing bookings and integrates Stripe payments, streamlining the client’s course and treatment scheduling process. It combines high performance with user-friendly features, effectively supporting global customers while maintaining scalability and security.
New Blog Design
I integrated a GraphQL API to support these design updates, enabling dynamic rendering of the newly added design components. This integration ensured seamless communication between the front-end and back-end systems, improving content delivery and user interaction.
I conducted a detailed audit of the current system, identifying critical performance issues and suggesting actionable improvements to optimize site speed and efficiency. These recommendations were implemented to ensure a smoother and faster user experience.
Additionally, I addressed and resolved several bugs and issues, significantly enhancing the site's stability and functionality. My contributions ensured that the Italist.com Magazine redesign met its objectives, delivering a polished and high-performing platform for users.
Visual Composer Website Builder
https://visualcomposer.comOur product is used on more than 200,000 websites worldwide.
Kondipak – Local eCommerce Project
https://kondipak.lvMogo Finance Website
The technologies I used for caching, include Redis caching. The back end was based on WordPress, and the front end was based on Visual Composer and React.
The main goals of the project were:
• High load effectiveness and performance
• Keep the website fresh
• Implement a new UI and redesign
WPBakery Page Builder
https://wpbakery.comTop technologies I use include PHP (Laravel), CRUD, JWT, OAuth, WordPress, PHPUnit, API, JavaScript, Backbone.js, jQuery, and Grunt.
Latvijas Mernieks Page
The main technologies I used were pure JavaScript, HTML5, jQuery, and WordPress.
For quality, I used PHPCS and PHPUnit, and for visual testing, I used Selenium.
Mammas Kūkas
I handled the full-stack website development, including server configuration, back end, and front end.
Education
Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science
Riga Technical University - Riga, Latvia
Certifications
Pragmatic Continuous Delivery
devchampions
PHP Applications Development
Retratech
Skills
Libraries/APIs
React, Backbone.js, DigitalOcean API, jQuery, REST APIs, PHP CodeSniffer, WordPress API, Stripe, Backbone.Marionette, GitHub API, Stripe API, WooCommerce API, Node.js, OpenAI API, Google Maps API, GraphQL API, Viator API, Google Tag Manager API
Tools
PhpStorm, GitLab CI/CD, CircleCI, Webpack, Babel, Xdebug, Git, WPBakery, Webpack 3, Webpack 4, Docker Compose, JavaScript Testing, WP-CLI, Advanced Custom Fields (ACF), GitHub, ACF PRO, NGINX, PostCSS, WPML, Travis CI, Grunt, Amelia, Gutenberg Editor
Languages
PHP, HTML, SQL, PHP 7, PHP 5, JavaScript, CSS, HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript 6, ECMAScript (ES6), Less, Sass, TypeScript, Web Services Description Language (WSDL), C++
Frameworks
Laravel, PHPUnit, Cypress, Laravel 5, Lumen, Bootstrap, JSON Web Tokens (JWT), JUnit, Jest, Tailwind CSS, TestCafe, Next.js, Bedrock
Paradigms
Design Patterns, Continuous Delivery (CD), Continuous Integration (CI), REST, Unit Testing, Continuous Deployment, Continuous Development (CD), Responsive Web Design (RWD), E2E Testing, CRUD, UI Design, Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Platforms
Ubuntu Linux, WordPress, WooCommerce, DigitalOcean, Linux, Docker, Visual Studio Code (VS Code), Drupal, LEMP, Kubernetes, Drupal 7, Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Storage
MySQL, MySQL/MariaDB, Redis Cache, WP Engine, Amazon S3 (AWS S3)
Industry Expertise
Web Design
Other
CI/CD Pipelines, APIs, Programming, Data Structures, OOP Designs, Debugging, Website Builders, OWASP, ESLint, Web Development, Full-stack, WordPress Plugins, WordPress Themes, Cloudflare, Integration, Visual Composer, Debugging Tools, Website Maintenance, API Integration, FTP, Page Speed Optimization, Custom Themes, Plugins, Back-end, Websites, Plugin Development, Webhooks, Drag & Drop, User Experience (UX), OAuth, Website Performance, PHP Performance, Profiling, QA Automation, End-to-end Implementation (E2E), WP Super Cache, Card Payments, Front-end, OpenAI GPT-4 API, Yoast SEO, WordPress Design, Elementor, AI Automation, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Google Tag Manager, Marketing Attribution, BrainTree, SOAP, PayPal, Digital Payments, Venipak, WPMU DEV, iGaming, GoDaddy, eCommerce, kevin, Online Banking, Shipping Management, Storefronts, WordPress SEO, SEO Tools, Wordfence Security, Caching, Content Delivery Networks (CDN), Tailwind UI, Sage 10, Schemas, Language Models, amelia, Booking Systems, Website Migration, Single-page Applications (SPAs), Front-end Development, Conversion-focused Design, Custom Website Development, Content Architecture, Custom CMS Development, Multilingual Websites, Gallery Management, Performance Optimization
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