Insights span technical, professional, educational, and opinion-driven perspectives; drawn from decades of hands-on experience building and scaling digital solutions.
Advice
Building software is cheap now. Which means it's never been easier to spend good money building the wrong thing.
build vs buy · software for small business · custom software · when not to build · SME software · off-the-shelf vs custom · hiring a developer · software costs
Opinion
Vibe coding will build you something that works. It won't tell you if it was the right thing to build.
vibe coding · technical judgement · framework choice · AI coding · Laravel · Postgres · refactoring · technical debt
Opinion
Buying a £49 theme and bolting plugins onto it looks cheap upfront. Over three years it usually costs a good deal more, and you rarely see it coming until something breaks.
WordPress · themes · plugins · maintenance · technical debt · hiring a developer · web development
Explainer
I was shown CI/CD back in 2018 and only got round to setting up my own GitLab runner fairly recently. Here's how it works, what a runner actually is, and the SSH-key snag that had me stuck for ages.
GitLab · CI/CD · runners · deployment · self-hosting · DevOps · SSH · automation
Explainer
Your broadband's sold in Mbps, your downloads show up in MB/s, and there are 8 bits in a byte. That factor of 8 is why a "fast" line can look eight times slower than the box promised.
Mbps · MB/s · internet speed · broadband speed · download speed · megabits vs megabytes · bandwidth · networking
Opinion
I updated a theme on this site and quietly broke the mobile layout for every phone user. A stranger caught it before I did, and I do this for a living. Here's what skipping testing actually costs you.
testing · WordPress · child theme · mobile · regression · rollback
Explainer
I used to pull changes straight onto the live server. It worked, but it was overhead I didn't need. Here's the cleaner way I deploy now, and why there's always a way back if a build goes wrong.
deployment · Git · CI/CD · rollback · branching · staging · SFTP · DevOps
Explainer
I run a GitLab server from home, which is cheap right up until my home IP changes and I can't reach it. Here's the bash script I use to keep DigitalOcean's DNS pointed at it, and how I finally got it updating itself.
dynamic dns · bash · DigitalOcean · DNS · self-hosting · cron · SysAdmin · GitLab
Explainer
Your media library won't upload and the error says permission denied. It's almost always ownership and file permissions. Here's what www-data, 755 and 644 mean, in plain terms, and how to get them right.
file permissions · www-data · chmod · chown · permission denied · Linux · Apache · WordPress · LAMP
Explainer
I reinstalled my machine and wiped the SSH keys to my own servers. Here's the calm way back into a DigitalOcean Droplet when the key's gone, updated for how the control panel and modern Ubuntu work now.
DigitalOcean · SSH keys · recovery consoles · Droplets · SysAdmin · password authentication · Ubuntu · server security