Blog

Articles & Tutorials

Technical insights, tutorials, and best practices for web development.

April 15, 2026

I Bought the Domain Before I Ran the Test. EmDash Still Lost to WordPress.

I read 150 EmDash hot takes in a week. Almost none came with data. So I built two identical sites, ran 4,732 cold-isolated curl measurements over ~3.5 days, and asked an SEO crawl-stats expert to grade the result blind. Here is what actually happened.

emdash wordpress astro
Read more
April 3, 2026

Your First Playwright Test for WooCommerce

Performance tests tell you how fast your store is. They don't tell you if your checkout actually works. Playwright does. Here's how to write your first test in under 10 minutes.

woocommerce playwright testing
Read more
March 21, 2026

Fast WooCommerce Search: An Experiment with RediSearch and SHORTINIT

The default WooCommerce search is slow by design. I'm building a custom plugin using RediSearch and SHORTINIT to see how fast autocomplete can get. Early results from a cheap VPS inside.

woocommerce performance search
Read more
March 5, 2026

Why Your WooCommerce Checkout Is Slow (And It's Not What You Think)

Your checkout page is the only page that can't be cached. Every millisecond of latency runs at bare server speed — and it's costing you conversions. Here's what's actually slow and how to fix it.

woocommerce performance checkout
Read more
March 4, 2026

The Staging Paradox: Why a Perfect Copy of Production Is a Ticking Time Bomb

A 1:1 database clone sends real emails, charges real cards, and corrupts your analytics. Here's how to build staging environments that are functionally identical but externally dead.

woocommerce staging devops
Read more
February 8, 2026

Why Hosting Should Be Step One in WordPress Optimization

Code optimization on a terrible host is a dead-end loop. I share real benchmarks - same code, two servers - and why the order of operations fundamentally changes the outcome.

wordpress optimization hosting
Read more
January 29, 2026

Shift64 - Built with Astro

A case study on building the Shift64 website using Astro, exploring the technology choices, architecture decisions, and lessons learned.

Astro Case Study Web Development
Read more
January 25, 2026

Automatic WordPress Theme Versioning with Semantic Release

Automate WordPress theme versioning end-to-end — from release pipeline setup to daily commits and PRs. One Claude Code skill sets up Semantic Release, three commands handle the rest.

wordpress devops git
Read more