THE JOURNAL
Notes on building, shipping & securing the web.
Performance · 5 min
Caching HTML at the edge without serving stale carts
Full-page caching at the CDN can cut server response times dramatically. How to do it without leaking personal data or breaking carts.
Leo Tanaka · Dec 02, 2025
Design · 5 min
Wireframe, clickable prototype or coded prototype
Prototype fidelity should match the question you are trying to answer. A guide to choosing the cheapest artifact that will actually settle the decision.
Nadia Haddad · Nov 19, 2025
SEO · 5 min
Fixing Interaction to Next Paint on content-heavy sites
INP is the Core Web Vital most sites now fail. Where the slow interactions usually come from and the fixes that move field data.
Ravi Iyer · Nov 18, 2025
DevOps · 5 min
Backups you have actually restored: running a quarterly drill
A backup you have never restored is a hope, not a plan. The quarterly drill we run for clients, what it measures, and what it usually uncovers.
Leo Tanaka · Nov 13, 2025
Shopify · 5 min
Metafields and metaobjects as a product content model
Stop hard-coding product details into descriptions. How we model structured content in Shopify so it scales across templates and markets.
Sofia Lindqvist · Nov 04, 2025
WordPress · 5 min
Multisite or separate installs: choosing for multi-brand WordPress
How we decide between WordPress Multisite and independent installs for organizations running many sites, with the trade-offs in governance, plugins and hosting.
Maya Okafor · Oct 29, 2025
E-commerce · 5 min
Setting up payment gateways for fewer declines and lower fees
Payment setup is usually decided once and never revisited. Small changes to routing, authentication and retries can recover real revenue.
Maya Okafor · Oct 22, 2025
Security · 5 min
Admin access hygiene: two-factor, roles and offboarding
Stolen and forgotten accounts cause more breaches than exotic exploits. A practical process for who gets access, how, and for how long.
Maya Okafor · Oct 21, 2025
Engineering · 5 min
Database schema decisions that hurt in year two
Schemas outlive frameworks, teams and redesigns. The early database choices we see causing the most pain later, and what we do differently from day one.
Maya Okafor · Oct 16, 2025
AI · 5 min
Giving AI agents tool access without handing over the keys
Scoped credentials, server-side policy, confirmation steps and prompt-injection defenses for agents that can take real actions in your systems.
Daniel Reyes · Oct 15, 2025
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Field notes from real client projects. No spam.