THE JOURNAL
Notes on building, shipping & securing the web.
Performance · 5 min
Taming third-party scripts without starting a war with marketing
Tags, pixels and widgets often account for most of a page's JavaScript. A governance process that keeps the useful ones and removes the rest.
Ravi Iyer · Jun 03, 2025
AI · 5 min
When workflow automation beats an AI agent, and when it does not
A decision framework for choosing between deterministic automation, a single LLM step and a full agent, with cost and reliability trade-offs.
Daniel Reyes · May 27, 2025
DevOps · 5 min
Cutting a cloud bill by a third without re-architecting
Most cloud waste sits in idle capacity, forgotten storage and on-demand pricing. A step-by-step review that trims spend without touching the application.
Leo Tanaka · May 14, 2025
E-commerce · 5 min
What a B2B wholesale portal actually needs to do
Wholesale buyers behave nothing like retail shoppers. The core requirements for a portal that sales teams and trade customers will both use.
Arjun Mehta · May 07, 2025
Security · 5 min
Backups that actually restore: how we design and test them
Most backup plans are never tested until the day they fail. Here is how we set retention, storage and quarterly restore drills.
Leo Tanaka · May 06, 2025
Shopify · 5 min
Auditing your Shopify app stack before it eats your margins
The average store we audit runs 20-plus apps. Here is how we decide which to keep, replace with native features or rebuild.
Sofia Lindqvist · May 06, 2025
WordPress · 5 min
Headless WordPress: when it pays off and when it does not
An honest look at the costs, benefits and hidden complexity of decoupling WordPress from its front end, with the questions we ask before recommending it.
Maya Okafor · Apr 23, 2025
Engineering · 5 min
Modernizing a legacy PHP application without a rewrite
Big-bang rewrites usually run late and ship with fewer features. How we use the strangler fig pattern to modernize legacy PHP one route at a time.
Maya Okafor · Apr 15, 2025
Performance · 5 min
Fixing LCP on image-heavy homepages
Large hero images are the most common cause of slow Largest Contentful Paint. A step-by-step approach to finding and fixing the delay.
Ravi Iyer · Apr 08, 2025
Design · 5 min
What WCAG 2.2 AA actually requires of a marketing site
Accessibility conformance sounds abstract until you map it to real pages. The criteria that trip up marketing sites most, and how to fix them.
Nadia Haddad · Apr 08, 2025
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