WordPress Developer in Tricity (Gdansk, Gdynia, Sopot)
I am Mariusz Szatkowski, a WordPress developer living and working in Gdynia, one of the three cities on the Bay of Gdańsk that Poles call Trójmiasto. I have built on WordPress since 2006. Businesses in Gdańsk, Gdynia and Sopot hire me, and so do companies in the UK, Ireland and the rest of Europe that want one senior developer instead of an agency.
I work alone. The person who reads your brief writes the code, holds the server access and answers your email.
What kind of work comes to me
Most jobs fall into one of three shapes. A custom plugin or block built around a real workflow, such as wholesale ordering, property listings or room bookings. A performance rebuild of a site someone assembled from several themes and a page builder. Or a WooCommerce store that has to work with local payment and shipping: in Poland that means BLIK, Przelewy24 and InPost; for a UK store it is usually Stripe, PayPal and Royal Mail or Evri; for Ireland, An Post.
Theme builds from a brief are described in more detail under development, customisation and themes adaptation.
Who I am
WPPoland is the name I trade under. One person, no employees, no partners, no subcontractors. You bring the wireframe and the graphic design, for example as a Figma file or as a filled-in spreadsheet where you mark which element sits where. I turn it into a responsive WordPress theme.
I have organised WordCamp Gdynia since 2015 and know the local WordPress community from the inside.
Built in Gdynia
WordPress work since 2006.
WordPress services
Themes from your layout
I build block themes on theme.json with patterns for the content you actually publish: services, case studies, events, locations. Your editors add a page without asking a developer. If the design lives in Figma with tokens, colours and spacing carry over so that Figma, the block editor and the CSS use the same values.
WooCommerce stores
A store starts with payment and shipping, because that is where orders get lost. I connect the gateway you already have a contract with, set up tax rules for the countries you sell to, and test checkout on real phones before launch.
Plugins
I write a custom plugin only when no maintained plugin covers the workflow. Code lives in Git, follows the WordPress Coding Standards and comes with notes for whoever works on it after me.
Contracts, data and communication for clients outside Poland
- Contract: a B2B agreement under Polish law, with an NDA if you need one.
- Invoice: issued from Poland with my EU VAT ID PL7393037445. For business customers in the EU, Ireland included, the reverse charge applies. UK business clients get an invoice without Polish VAT.
- Personal data: a processor contract under Art. 28 GDPR before I touch a site with customer data. For a UK controller the same clause sits under Art. 28 UK GDPR. I do not use sub-processors.
- Communication: in writing, by email, shared documents and the repository, so every decision can be found again later. I do not suggest meetings or video calls; if you want a call, ask.
- Time zone: Gdynia is one hour ahead of London and Dublin.
How a project runs
- Brief: you describe the scope, current site, hosting, payment and shipping.
- Questions: I ask in writing about what the brief leaves open.
- Proposal: scope, assumptions and timeline in writing, before any code.
- Build: private Git repository, every push deploys to staging, production only after your sign-off.
- Review: you check staging and get a written note for every change.
- Launch: after tests in current Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Edge, plus iOS Safari and Chrome on Android.
How long it takes depends on scope; the timeline is in the proposal.
Maintenance
Maintenance covers uptime checks every 1 to 5 minutes, backups kept for at least 30 days in EU countries, and updates I test on staging before they reach your live site. I do not sell hosting: you choose the provider and I work with the stack you have. There is no on-call service outside working hours and no fixed response time.
Rebuilding an existing site
If the site is slow, breaks on mobile or lost a form after an update, I start with a review: PHP version on the host, plugins that have not been updated in a year, the theme, and Core Web Vitals from Google’s field data. You get a list of findings with a recommendation for each, including the cases where removing a plugin is better than replacing it. Only then do I quote the fixes.
The WordPress community in Tricity
WordUp Trójmiasto meetups bring developers, marketers and people running their own sites together around WordPress, and WordCamp Gdynia, which I organise, is the larger yearly event. Dates are on the WordUp Trójmiasto site.
For one senior developer without an agency layer, see also WordPress freelancer and the general WordPress developer page.
