In my last blog post I was floating the idea of moving from WordPress to a Static Site Generator (SSG) called Astro. Instead, I made a local install of WordPress into my Static Site Generator. WP Code Box, although not essential to this, made things much easier to move toward a Jamstack approach. This is…
Read MoreI’ve used WordPress almost daily since 2007. It changed my life and for over a decade it has been my sole way of building websites. I even added “WP” to my web design business name. Over recent years much has changed both in and out of WordPress. I’ve changed too. I adopted an agile approach…
Read MoreThere’s a few small, but unnecessarily things that can slow our WordPress page loads. They’re easily fixed with either a code snippet or a light-weight plugin. I’ve started storing snippets with WPCodeBox as a convenient and light-weight option, but of course, you don’t need to do the same. Unused styles from the Block Editor My…
Read MoreThe Classic Editor and Classic widgets plugins are officially recommended for disabling Gutenberg. Both are popular* and highly rated, but aside from having two plugins to install, the Classic Editor does not remove Gutenberg’s styles and recently added SVGs. Although the performance impact is not huge, it’s more things Google wants us to improve as…
Read MoreIn my last post on WPCodebox I said I’d share the snippets I’m gathering to reduce my dependency on WordPress plugins. You don’t need WPCodebox here as you can simply add these php snippets to your child theme’s functions.php file. But, it’s worth checking out as it’s great for efficiency and does much more. In…
Read MoreI’ve been mentioning WPCodeBox for a while. Recently I tried to “review” it and failed! As WPCodeBox is relatively new, it’s probably best to look at their website and particularly their road map to see where it is currently. It’s great as it is, but as it is still to reach its full potential and…
Read MoreClarity was launched by Microsoft at the end of 2020. I’ve only just begun to use it, so I’m not in a position to give it a ringing endorsement, but I’m very impressed with how pleasant it is to use. A great example of the Keep it Simple, Stupid principle and a useful tool for…
Read MoreReduced risk is perhaps the key reason for agile project management going mainstream in IT and development. It’s taken many years and annual losses running into billions to force top-down, budget focussed organisations like governments to change, but for small web agencies it should be much easier. We don’t have centuries of culture overturn and…
Read MoreAgile focuses on continuous delivery where the traditional model works to deadlines. The feast and famine problem known to most web designers is a product of the traditional approach. Two common tactics have emerged to overcome this problem. Value pricing – getting high ticket jobs to cover the designer for longer periods. Recurring incomes –…
Read MoreWeb designing was my escape from the tedium of being a manager in the civil service. I loved working with staff to achieve our shared goals, but the processes and documentation requested by my office became soul destroying. I felt it prevented me from getting on with my job. Mostly, I was creating an unread…
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