Daniel
Porter

GitHub is the backbone of my development workflow, extending far beyond basic version control. I rely on GitHub Actions to power CI/CD pipelines that automate testing, builds, and deployments, ensuring consistency and reliability across projects.

GitHub Copilot has become an invaluable AI pair programmer, accelerating development while reinforcing best practices and code quality.

While I've traditionally worked in small agency environments where formal version control processes were less emphasized, I've proactively adopted and expanded my use of industry-standard workflows. This has allowed me to grow beyond the expectations of my role and align my development practices with modern, scalable engineering standards.

More than a tool, GitHub is where decisions are documented, changes are reviewed, and quality is enforced—creating a shared source of truth that scales with both projects and teams.

Next.js and React are my go-to frameworks for building modern web applications. Next.js enhances React with server-side rendering, static site generation, and API routes out of the box, making it easy to build scalable, production-ready applications.

Integrating with external services is seamless—whether that's native Google Cloud integrations or webhook-driven intake systems—allowing applications to move data efficiently and reliably.

The developer experience is exceptional. From automatic code splitting and built-in image optimization to opinionated defaults that reduce configuration overhead, Next.js handles the heavy lifting so I can focus on crafting high-quality user experiences. I particularly value the tight Vercel integration for instant deployments and the ability to leverage edge functions for optimal performance.

Tailwind CSS has completely transformed how I approach styling. Its utility-first methodology has largely eliminated the need for custom CSS, allowing styles to be composed directly in markup using intelligent, consistent design tokens.

The development speed is exceptional, and the resulting codebase remains surprisingly clean and maintainable. I especially value Tailwind's built-in responsive modifiers, dark mode support, and the way it naturally enforces design consistency across projects.

Beyond Next.js sites and SPAs, I've successfully adapted both new and legacy WordPress builds by implementing a custom Tailwind compilation workflow, injecting minified CSS directly into the document head to preserve performance and maintain fast load times.

With over 20 years of WordPress experience, I've seen it evolve from a simple blogging platform to a powerful CMS powering 40% of the web. The real skill? Being able to wade through a decade-old WordPress site, migrate the data cleanly, and rebuild it with best practices—all while keeping the business running.

While my focus has shifted to modern JavaScript frameworks, WordPress remains valuable for content-heavy sites and clients who need user-friendly content management. I've built countless custom themes and plugins, integrated WooCommerce for complex e-commerce solutions, and optimized WordPress sites for performance and SEO.

Supabase is my preferred backend when I want a fast, modern way to work with PostgreSQL. It provides instant APIs, authentication, and real-time subscriptions without getting in the way of the database itself.

The auto-generated APIs eliminate a lot of repetitive setup while still allowing full access to PostgreSQL features like complex queries, functions, triggers, and row-level security. PostgreSQL remains my database of choice for its reliability and flexibility.

After spending years working with tools like phpMyAdmin, using Supabase feels like a reset. The developer experience is significantly more modern and efficient, making day-to-day database work faster and far less painful.

Cloudflare has been part of my stack long enough for me to see it evolve from a DNS and CDN provider into a full edge platform. I use it for DNS management, CDN delivery, and DDoS mitigation, as well as Cloudflare Workers to execute application logic at the edge and reduce latency.

I've implemented image optimization, Argo smart routing, and Web Analytics to improve performance and observability while maintaining user privacy. The expansion of Cloudflare's edge capabilities has enabled more flexible and scalable application architectures in my projects.

Vercel is my preferred deployment platform because it stays simple while scaling cleanly from small static sites to complex applications. I've used it for everything from one-page static HTML sites to larger Next.js applications and headless WordPress builds.

Its Git-based deployment model and automatic preview URLs fit naturally into my workflow and make testing and collaboration straightforward. Features like automatic HTTPS, edge delivery, and serverless functions remove infrastructure overhead and allow me to focus on building and shipping.

Performance tooling and Core Web Vitals visibility help ensure the sites I deploy remain fast and reliable. Let's face it, traditional web hosting is a thing of the past.