Welcome to Nexvel Solutions

We build and maintain sites for local-service businesses — roofing, plumbing, dental, legal, and similar clients. Most of our sites are headless WordPress — WordPress as the backend/CMS with a separate Gatsby, Astro, or Next.js frontend — alongside some older traditional (non-block) WordPress sites. We've recently pivoted to building custom WordPress block themes (Gutenberg / theme.json) for new work, and are converting some existing headless sites over to that model. The headless sites share a custom component library.

A lot of day-to-day development happens inside Claude Code, using a large project-specific skill library plus MCP integrations for hosting (Cloudways), WordPress, and deploys (Netlify). This doc exists so none of that has to be rediscovered the hard way.

As lead developer, Ashley reviews all pull requests. New devs report to Jeff and Chad. Tasks are assigned through Monday — anyone on the team can assign one, but expect many of yours to come through Ashley. Depending on the project or task, devs may work solo on a client or as part of a pair/team — it varies.

Onboarding Checklist

Checked items are saved locally in your browser, so you can close this and pick up where you left off.

Accounts & Access

• GitHub org access — dev team invite from Ashley
• Cloudways account access (hosting/server management for some client sites) - from Chad
• Netlify team access (for headless/static client deploys) - from Ashley
• Monday board access (client list, monthly maintenance tracking) - from Jeff or Chad
• Slack invite - from Jeff or Chad
• Nexvel email address - from Chad
• Added to Claude/Anthropic Team - from Jeff
• Get any other necessary credentials from Ashley — where you store them afterward is up to you

Local Environment

Ashley uses Zed as a text editor, but use whatever you're comfortable with.

• Claude Code installed & logged in
• Node.js installed
• Local WordPress environment working (WordPress Studio)

First Week

• Get walked through the shared component library and its versioning convention (for headless sites)
• Make a small, low-risk change on one client site under review before touching anything unsupervised

First Month

• Sit in on (or read the log of) one monthly maintenance pass to see the recurring workflow in action — timing depends on where the monthly cycle falls relative to your start date

Tech Stack

Engineering Conventions

These are hard-won rules from real client work, not stylistic preferences. Breaking them tends to cause real rework.

1. No hardcoding. All text and images must be editable in the WordPress admin. Never bake copy or image URLs directly into block markup or template code.
2. No inline styles. Strip style / width / color attributes from block JSON. All visual styling lives in CSS classes in the theme stylesheet.
3. Use custom post types sparingly. Default to modeling content with block markup or the Customizer/Options API — reach for a CPT only when the content genuinely calls for it.
4. Prefer concrete names when one exists. If the client/team has a name for a section (e.g. leak-repair), use that instead of an abstract slot name. Generic names like content-section-2 are fine when a section genuinely doesn't have a more specific name.
5. Component versioning ≠ supersession. V-numbered shared components (HeaderV11 vs HeaderV2) are independent variants built for different clients/use-cases — not an old/new pair. Don't "upgrade" a client off an older version unless you're explicitly asked to.
6. CSS should be mobile-first. Write base/unqueried styles for the smallest screen, then use min-width media queries to add complexity for larger screens — not the reverse.

Git & Workflow Discipline

• Almost always open a PR, and let Ashley know about it. Don't merge straight to main unless the change is really small.

Claude Code & Tooling

Most newer WordPress development on the team happens inside Claude Code. Many of the WordPress-specific skills below come bundled with WordPress Studio; others are project-specific, written for Nexvel's own conventions and gotchas. Claude Code will usually pick the right one automatically based on what you ask for — worth knowing the list exists in case it doesn't.

Key skills

MCP integrations

• Cloudways — server/app management, backups, monitoring, DNS, directly from Claude Code
• Netlify — deploys for headless/static client sites
• WordPress — via the Abilities API and a set of MCP Abilities plugins: block editor (parse/validate/generate Gutenberg content), database (confirm-gated search/replace), Formidable forms, Wordfence security, broken link checking, and core site management (content, menus, users, media, widgets, plugins, options)

Recurring Maintenance

Every client site gets a monthly (and quarterly) maintenance pass, run through the monthly-updates skill:

1. Monday client list review
2. MainWP plugin/core updates across all managed sites
3. Update testing on each site
4. Contact form tests
5. WhatConverts verification
6. Wordfence security scans
7. Static-site build checks (for sites still on Gatsby/Astro/Next)
8. Quarterly only: broken-link checks and site-speed tests

Clients who don't confirm receipt of a form test get a follow-up pass via the monthly-updates-follow-up skill, which just re-submits the form — it doesn't re-run the whole workflow.

Getting Help

• Technical lead / access or account issues: Ashley
• Client credentials, such as DNS: Google Drive > Shared drives > Nexvel Team Drive > Client Folders > _Client Logins
• Slack: most channels are project-specific, but there's a #general-dev channel for anything not tied to one client
• Client-facing production issue: create a task on Monday and assign it to Ashley first — she'll decide whether to hand it to you or handle it herself

Changelog

Update this whenever something in the doc changes, so it's clear it's being kept current.

• 2026-09-14 — Initial version.