I'm Mathieu Muller — a French-born, UK-based web developer. For the last eight years I've been a senior WordPress, WooCommerce, and Shopify developer at a UK web agency, building custom plugins, themes, and integrations for clients across retail, leisure, travel, and B2B.
Tinkernotes is where I write down what I learn. Mostly: WordPress and WooCommerce architecture, Shopify where it's the right answer, hosting that earns its money in the UK, payment gateways, performance work, and the kinds of integrations agencies actually ship — CRM, ERP, booking, ticketing. Increasingly: Linux, self-hosting, gaming on Linux, and side projects that wander into AI and blockchain when the problem demands it.
How I got here
I started in IT and security in the early 2000s — building PCs, tinkering with electronics, and fixing networks before code paid the bills. At 21 I opened my own IT company in France and ran it for about five years before moving to Australia in my late twenties. At 29 I came to the UK and never quite left.
My first UK role was in-house at a company managing pubs and hotels — IT staff by day, the de facto developer by everything else. I built them a PHP accounting app for pubs to track staff wages and P&Ls, with Crystal Reports wired to deliver the numbers to head office automatically. Around the same time I maintained and extended OpenGTS, a Java-based geolocation platform a UK firm used to manage vehicle fleets for its clients.
A couple of web agencies later, I landed where I am now. Before WordPress was the default I'd shipped sites in Mambo, Joomla, CMSmadeSimple, Prestashop, and Magento — among others I've half-forgotten. Each one informed how I think about the next. WordPress and WooCommerce kept showing up as the answer for the UK clients I work with, and that's where most of my time has lived since.
Why this exists
Two reasons, both honest.
To archive my brain. After years of solving the same kinds of problems for clients, I've built up patterns, gotchas, and decisions I want to write down before I forget the why behind them. Future me is the primary reader.
Because the public writing on these topics is mostly bad. Most UK ecommerce content online is US-priced, marketer-written, or generated to push affiliate links. I'd rather write the version a working dev actually wants to read — UK pricing, renewal rates not intro teasers, real benchmarks, and the "this isn't for you if..." sections most reviews skip.
If it makes some affiliate income along the way, fine. If it doesn't, I'll still have written it.
What I write about — and how
Most articles draw from my own work and side projects. Some draw from work I've done at the agency, where the patterns are mine but the code, partnerships, and commercial relationships are the agency's. When that's the case, the agency is credited, no code is published, and no client relationships are claimed. Patterns and architecture are fair game; agency IP is not.
Reviews are independent. Affiliate links exist but never determine the verdict. The methodology page explains how I verify pricing and what I actually look for. The affiliate disclosure page lists every program currently in use.
What I'm building
Beyond Tinkernotes itself — running on Astro and Cloudflare, a small experiment in seeing if the site can rank for serious queries — I work on a couple of side projects that wander into AI and blockchain territory. I'll write about them here when they earn the right to be written about.
Contact
For anything related to the site, the only way to reach me is hello@tinkernotes.io.
I'm not on social media — that's deliberate, and unlikely to change. I prefer the shadows, which makes Tinkernotes the most public move I've made in a long time. If it ends up as a quiet personal archive that nobody else reads, that's still a win.
— Mathieu