Field notes & essays.
Working notes, lessons, and the occasional opinion — from building websites, software, and AI systems for real businesses.
The full archive.
Every post, in chronological order.
The True Cost of Cheap Websites: What $500 Builds Actually Cost You
The hidden math behind cheap websites: lost leads, security risk, vendor lock, rebuild costs, and maintenance debt — with real numbers for service businesses.
Disaster Recovery for Your Website: Backups, Runbooks, and the Day Things Break
A practical disaster recovery guide for small business websites — the 3-2-1 backup rule, RTO/RPO, runbooks for common incidents, and communicating outages.
API-First Business: Why Your Systems Should Talk to Each Other
What data silos actually cost, REST vs webhooks vs events, picking integration platforms, master data management basics, and avoiding vendor lock-in.
Microcopy: The Tiny Words That Decide Whether People Buy
A practical guide to microcopy for service business websites: button labels, form helpers, error messages, empty states, and confirmations that actually convert.
Google Search Console: The Five Reports Every Business Should Check Monthly
The five Google Search Console reports every small business should check monthly: Performance, Pages, Core Web Vitals, Sitemaps, and Manual Actions — with concrete actions.
Choosing a Web Agency: The Questions That Separate Good From Bad
The questions that separate good web agencies from bad ones: process, communication, team continuity, post-launch support, references, and pricing transparency.
GDPR, CCPA, and Cookie Banners: What Actually Applies to a Small Business Site
What GDPR, CCPA, and cookie banner laws actually require of a small business website — jurisdiction, consent, dark patterns, and when you don't need a banner.
Building an Internal Dashboard for Your Business: The Honest Tradeoffs
Retool vs Metabase vs Looker vs custom — query performance, role-based access, and the moment when canned reports stop being enough for your team.
Typography on the Web: The Decisions That Shape Readability
A practical guide to web typography for service businesses: line length, line height, font pairing, fluid type, font loading, and what makes text actually readable.