Insights & Guides
Technical notes, tutorials, and thought leadership on headless architecture and modern web development.
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Building a WordPress Site With AI (This Isn't Vibe Coding)
I rebuilt a client site with AI, scraping the old content and merging a Figma design into WordPress. Here is why a structured build is the opposite of vibe coding.
Read noteHow I Used to Build Magento Front Ends (and How I Build Them Now)
For years I built shop fronts by wrestling a Magento theme into shape with Gulp, Sass and a stack of build tools. It worked, but the theme was always in charge. Here is how I used to do it, and why I now build with components instead.
Read noteHow I Used to Survive Magento Upgrades (and Why I Don't Dread Them Now)
For years a Magento version upgrade was the job I quietly dreaded. Plan it, warn people, test it, watch things break. One went badly wrong in production. Here is how that used to feel, and why a headless stack means your site no longer needs a nerve-wracking overhaul every year to stay current.
Read noteHow I Used to Deploy Magento (and How Shipping Works Now)
Pushing changes live on a Magento store used to be a careful, nerve-wracking routine: maintenance mode, a string of commands, and a real chance the site fell over while you watched. Here is how I used to do it, and how shipping changes works now on a headless build.
Read noteHow I Used to Make Magento Fast (and How I Get 100/100 Now)
Years ago I made a video about squeezing speed out of Magento with a few admin settings. It worked, up to a point. Here is what I did then, and how a headless rebuild now scores a perfect 100 on Google PageSpeed.
Read noteI Don't Write Code the Way I Used To (and Neither Do You)
AI didn't replace developers. It replaced the job description. The honest version of what senior development actually looks like now.
Read noteFriday notes: headless goes mainstream, and the agentic commerce hype
This week's read on the 2026 headless numbers, the agentic commerce noise, and what went live here.
Read noteOwn Your Ecommerce Platform, Don't Rent It
For businesses that are done renting their store from a platform. Own your database, your front end, and your own CMS outright, no lock-in, no rent hikes, no platform holding your shop hostage.
Read noteWhy I Moved From Magento to Headless
I spent fifteen years building Magento stores, then walked away. Here's why a fast, bespoke shop that bends to your business beats a template and a pile of apps.
Read noteOne Place to Run Your Whole Studio
Running a small studio from one place instead of a website here, a booking app there and payments somewhere else. What that looks like, with a real example.
Read noteBookings Done Properly
The gap between wanting to book and actually booking is where small service businesses lose money quietly. Here is what booking looks like when it is built into the site itself, with a real example from a Hull tattoo studio.
Read noteBeating the Instagram Trap: Why Local SEO Beats the Algorithm
Service businesses like hair salons, tattoo studios, and beauty therapists have built their entire client pipeline on Instagram. That's a problem. Here's why a properly optimised website with local SEO will always outperform a rented algorithm.
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