NGINX, Servers
Adding a Let’s Encrypt SSL to a redirection domain
We recently had to sort an SSL issue with a site that had been purely setup for handling redirections. For example, doing a global redirection from https://domainA.com to https://domainB.com during a company rebrand. This step is simple enough, the issue arises when Let’s Encrypt needs to re-validate and issue a…...
Read more →Docker, Optimisation
Speeding up local development while using Docker for Mac
While Docker can be very efficient for production environments, it may not as speedy in development setups. There is an infamous Github issue called "Issue 77" about this topic, specifically Docker Desktop for Mac OSX. Since it was opened there have been over 200 comments on the post. There is a workaround to help speed increases, yet it's frustratingly hard to find in the thread. The main issue revolves around volumes and mounting, so caching can help reduce this latency....
Read more →Talks, WordCamp, WordPress
Speaking at WordCamp Bristol 2019
UPDATE 19/06/19: The footage from the talk has been uploaded to WordPress.tv. It can be viewed here: https://wordpress.tv/2019/06/19/david-darke-gutenberg-how-a-wordpress-studio-adapted/ The talk I recently spoke at WordCamp Bristol 2019. Even though I have spoken at a number of local WordPress meetups, this was the first at the scale of a WordCamp....
Read more →Servers
Enabling HSTS
Some of our clients that use Semrush for website health auditing, have reported that HSTS is now a requirement for a site to be rated as 100% HTTPS verified: What is HSTS?...
Read more →Optimisation
Generating above the fold CSS using Chrome Coverage data
Producing "above the fold" CSS for CMS driven sites (like WordPress) can be difficult. Using something like purgecss may be possible with task-driven workflows, yet what about sites that don't (or even can't) use this approach? The process takes your loaded webpage and works out what CSS is actually being used. Then with a small bit of manual editing, you can craft an appropriate critical CSS file....
Read more →WordPress
Hello internet!
After almost 8 years of not having a personal website, I’ve finally decided to get one spun up. Pretty mad for a web developer to not have a website right? So here is a little landmark, the first post on the day the site went live……...
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