News
Development
Zero JavaScript Is a Product Decision, Not a Performance Trick
Shipping no client-side script is usually sold as a speed optimisation. The speed is the smallest thing you get. What actually changes is the set of failures your site is capable of having.
By Trent Development The Static Web SecOps 4 min read
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SEO
The Canonical Tag Is a Claim About Identity
Most canonical bugs are not tagging mistakes. They are a site accidentally telling search engines that all of its pages are the same page — and the defaults in every framework make that the easy thing to do.
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SEO
Structured Data Is a Contract, Not a Checkbox
Schema.org markup is usually treated as an SEO garnish you add at the end. It is better understood as a set of machine-readable promises about a page — which means the interesting question is what happens when the page stops keeping them.
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AI
What an Agent Needs Before It Will Quote You
Optimising for language models is mostly framed as writing for a new kind of reader. The more useful frame is that you are now writing for a reader that has to decide whether to stake its answer on you.
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Development
Content in Git Is a Database Decision
Putting your content in a repository looks like a tooling preference. It is actually a choice about consistency, history and who is allowed to write — and it has a specific expiry date you should decide in advance.
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SecOps
The Dependency You Did Not Choose
Your direct dependencies are a decision. Everything underneath them is a consequence — and on a typical install, the consequences outnumber the decisions by two orders of magnitude.
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Design
A Design System Is a Refusal
The value of a component library is not the components. It is the set of decisions it takes off the table — and a system that keeps saying yes to variants has given that value away.
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Cloud
The Bill Is the Architecture
Cloud cost is usually treated as an optimisation problem to be solved after the fact. It is more honest to read the invoice as a description of the system you actually built, including the parts you did not mean to.
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Writing & Content
RSS Is Still the Best API You Can Ship
A feed costs a few dozen lines, requires no keys, no versioning and no support, and gives every consumer — reader, aggregator, script or agent — the same view of your archive. Almost nobody ships one properly.
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Every piece, as a feed
New writing lands in the articles feed with a real publication date on every item. The events radar keeps its own — two streams, because one of them is sorted by what has happened and the other by what is coming.