THE JOURNAL
Notes on building, shipping & securing the web.
Engineering · 5 min
Write the API contract before the front end exists
Agreeing on an API contract up front lets front-end and back-end teams work in parallel. How we write, review and enforce contracts on client projects.
Maya Okafor · Feb 12, 2025
Design · 5 min
Starting a design system with tokens, not components
Design systems often stall because they start with a component library. Starting with tokens brings consistency sooner and a foundation that survives rebrands.
Nadia Haddad · Feb 11, 2025
Performance · 5 min
Setting performance budgets that survive the next redesign
Most speed gains erode within a year. Budgets enforced in CI and tied to business metrics are how we keep them.
Ravi Iyer · Feb 11, 2025
SEO · 5 min
The SEO-safe website migration checklist we use on every relaunch
Most traffic losses after a relaunch are preventable. The redirect mapping, pre-launch checks and first-month monitoring we run every time.
Ravi Iyer · Feb 11, 2025
WordPress · 5 min
How we vet a WordPress plugin before it goes on a client site
The review process we run on every third-party plugin, from maintenance signals to code checks, and when we write our own instead.
Maya Okafor · Jan 22, 2025
AI · 5 min
Write the evals before the prompt: testing LLM features properly
How we build evaluation sets, graders and CI gates for LLM features so that every prompt or model change is measured instead of guessed.
Daniel Reyes · Jan 14, 2025
E-commerce · 5 min
How to audit checkout abandonment step by step
Most checkout drop-off comes from a handful of fixable causes. Here is the audit sequence we run before touching a single design file.
Sofia Lindqvist · Jan 14, 2025
Security · 5 min
The first hour after your website is hacked
A calm, ordered response plan for the moment you discover a compromise, from containment and evidence to cleanup and communication.
Leo Tanaka · Jan 14, 2025
One email a month. Only the good stuff.
Field notes from real client projects. No spam.