Blog integration · Custom features · Plugins

Custom WordPress Development: Blog Integration, Custom Features and Plugins

Two things bring businesses to us about WordPress. A custom-built website that now needs a blog, where building a publishing system from scratch would cost more than the site did. Or an existing WordPress site where the theme and plugins stop short of what the business needs. We integrate WordPress into custom sites so it looks and behaves like part of them, and build the features, plugins and theme changes off-the-shelf WordPress cannot.

Discuss Your WordPress Need See How We Did Ours
apothemit.comapothemit.com home page, a custom-built site
apothemit.com/blogapothemit.com/blog, WordPress using the same header
Same headercustom site + WordPress blog
/blogon your domain, not a subdomain
1header and footer for both
Child themeor plugin, so updates do not break it
Oursthis site runs the setup

What We Do With WordPress

Not general WordPress website building: these specific jobs, which is where a development team earns its fee.

Add a WordPress blog to a custom website

Your site is Laravel, React, static or anything else; we install WordPress under /blog, make it reuse your header, footer, fonts and colours, and set up SEO, caching and security. Your team publishes in WordPress; visitors never notice the seam. See our blog.

Our WordPress blog inside the custom site

Custom features your theme cannot do

A booking flow, a calculator, a members’ area, a custom post type with its own fields, a CRM or ERP integration. Built as a child theme or plugin so theme updates do not break it.

Custom plugin development

When no plugin does what you need, or the one that does costs more in licences than building it. Coded to WordPress standards, documented, and yours.

WooCommerce customisation

Custom checkout fields, pricing rules, shipping logic, payment gateways, and syncing orders to your accounting or inventory system.

Headless WordPress

WordPress as the editor, a React or Laravel front-end as the site, connected over the REST API or WPGraphQL.

WordPress-to-Laravel migration

When a WordPress site has grown into an application held together by thirty plugins, we rebuild the application part in Laravel and keep WordPress for content, or migrate fully. Laravel Development

The job we are asked about most

How We Integrate WordPress Into a Custom Site

  1. Install under your domain, not a subdomain

    yoursite.com/blog keeps SEO value on one domain; a subdomain splits it. We install WordPress in a /blog folder on the same server, as on this site, or reverse-proxy it if hosting requires.

  2. Match the design

    A custom theme that loads your main site’s CSS and includes its actual header and footer files, so the blog is visibly the same site and menus never drift apart.

  3. Fix the plumbing

    HTTPS behind Cloudflare, canonical URLs, an SEO plugin configured, sitemap, caching, hardened admin, backups and updates.

  4. Connect the two

    Links between the main site and the blog, shared analytics, and the same Organization schema on both.

  5. Hand over

    An editor login, a short training session, and a one-page guide to publishing an optimised post.

blog/wp-content/themes/apothem-blog/header.php
<!-- Parent site’s favicon tags -->
<?php apothem_include_partial( 'favicon.php' ); ?>

<!-- main.css, custom.css, SEO plugin tags -->
<?php wp_head(); ?>
</head>
<body <?php body_class(); ?>>

<!-- The main site’s own header file -->
<?php apothem_include_partial( 'header-light.php' ); ?>

Simplified from this site’s blog theme. The footer works the same way.

Timeline and cost: typically one to two weeks from start to first post, priced as a fixed project.

Why Integrate WordPress Instead of Building a CMS

WordPress has spent twenty years solving these problems, and your marketing team already knows it. For content we integrate WordPress; for application logic we build custom.

A custom CMS means building, then maintaining

  • An editor
  • Media library
  • Drafts and scheduling
  • Categories and tags
  • Author management
  • SEO fields
  • Sitemaps
  • RSS

WordPress already has all of it

  • An editor
  • Media library
  • Drafts and scheduling
  • Categories and tags
  • Author management
  • SEO fields
  • Sitemaps
  • RSS
When we would still say no: if the “blog” is really a product catalogue, a learning platform or anything with business logic, that belongs in Laravel, with WordPress alongside it for articles only.
Where we have done this

apothemit.com

The site you are reading is custom-built, with WordPress integrated at /blog. The blog reuses the main site’s header, footer and styling, runs on the same domain behind Cloudflare, and is maintained by our own team. The setup we sell is the one we run.

Visit the blogSee all our work
apothemit.com, the custom site the blog is part of
FAQ

Custom WordPress Development: Common Questions

Something else? Ask us on WhatsApp.

Yes. We install WordPress under /blog on your domain, build a theme that matches your site’s header, footer and design, and configure SEO, caching and security. Your team publishes in WordPress; visitors see one site. This website runs that setup.

Subfolder (/blog). It keeps the SEO authority of your main domain and your posts on one property in Search Console. We use a subdomain only when hosting constraints force it.

Usually, yes: as a child theme or a small plugin, so the feature survives theme updates. If the theme itself is the problem, we will say so and quote a replacement.

Yes, when no existing plugin fits or when licence costs outweigh a build. We code to WordPress standards, document the plugin, and hand over the source.

An audit first: often it is a few plugins and a hosting change. If the site has become an application, we rebuild the application part in Laravel and keep WordPress for content, or migrate fully.