A friend reached out to me recently after discovering something alarming in their WordPress posts. They were using Yoast SEO Premium with the Classic Editor, and they found Yoast had been automatically inserting odd-looking CSS classes like ai-optimize-6, ai-optimize-9, directly into their content. The problem is that these classes remain…

A friend recently asked me, “Should I use WordPress or Django for my new website?” It’s a great question, and a common one. Choosing the right content management system (CMS) can shape your entire online experience. While WordPress has always been my go-to for building websites, I’ve spent time exploring…

When I first started building websites, I thought about using Drupal. It’s a strong platform, but it was too complicated and hard to learn, especially for beginners. That’s why I chose WordPress instead. It’s powerful, easy to use, and now, it’s what I use for all my websites. Over the…

From a plugin built for a local baseball team to one of the most trusted tools in the WordPress ecosystem, TablePress is a story of steady growth, community focus, and user-first development. Its creator, Tobias Bäthge, didn’t start as a software engineer. He studied control engineering and stumbled into plugin…

A few months ago, my friend asked me to look at her WordPress website. Her online store looked great, but she was frustrated because visitors weren’t buying anything. After spending just 30 minutes on her site, I could see exactly why—the user experience was all over the place. I’ve seen…

When I first tried to accept payments on my WordPress website, the process was frustrating. Hours of setup, confusing settings, and test transactions that failed more often than they succeeded. I quickly realized that choosing the wrong payment solution could mean the difference between a thriving business and lost customers.…

When I first looked into hosting WordPress on Google Cloud, I thought, “This could be the upgrade I’ve been waiting for.” The idea of running my site on the same infrastructure powering Google Search and YouTube? That was exciting. But it also raised a lot of questions. There’s no question…

‘Your domain name is about to expire!’ This scary email lands in thousands of business owners’ inboxes every day. Many of these urgent messages may be scams. They’re cleverly designed to mimic legitimate renewal notices from real domain registrars. This makes it nearly impossible to tell the difference at first…

May has been a month of big changes in the WordPress ecosystem. From enhanced SEO features in AIOSEO to important privacy updates in WPConsent and performance boosts in WooCommerce, there’s a lot to cover. This month, we also saw the formation of a dedicated AI team at WordPress.org, which signals…

When I first started building WordPress websites, tracking visitor data just meant installing Google Analytics and calling it a day. But times have changed. With new privacy regulations, using cookies to collect personal information without user consent can lead to legal headaches and lost visitors. I’ve helped several WordPress site…