PHP Development

I work with both. Lately I lean towards Laravel for its batteries-included approach: most of what an application needs is already in the framework, with clear conventions, which cuts both start-up time and the number of decisions to make about supporting components.

Symfony remains the natural choice when a codebase already exists on that framework, or when the project needs finer control over components and a more explicit structure. On a migration in particular, staying in the same family is almost always less risky than changing framework while also changing language version.

The most demanding case I have completed is upgrading a codebase from PHP 5.3 with Symfony 3 all the way to PHP 8.5 with Symfony 7. That is not a single jump: it crosses several majors, each bringing removals and behavioural changes the existing code knows nothing about.

I handled it with Rector for automated code transformations, which reliably covers the mechanical part of the upgrade, and with PHPUnit configured so that deprecation warnings surface. That last point is what makes the operation practical: deprecation warnings become an automatic signal while moving between majors, instead of turning into errors discovered in production months later.

The outcome of a migration done this way is not just a newer version: it is a codebase that has security updates available again, and a test base you can keep working from.

I tend not to take WordPress work. It is not where I do my best work, and I prefer to say so up front rather than accept the job and deliver it reluctantly.

If a project genuinely requires it and the rest of the engagement makes sense, I will work on it. But if the core of the request is a WordPress site, someone is almost certainly a better fit than me, and I will say so at first contact.