My WordPress Development Setup in 2026: VS Code, AI, and Local Tools
Why I’m Sharing My Setup Every few months, someone asks me what my development environment looks like. And every time, I realize my answer … Read more…
Writing
Notes from inside the studio
WordPress, BuddyPress, Laravel, Astro, AI. Search the archive or filter by topic.
50+ Community Projects Later: What Actually Makes Them Succeed
Why I’m Writing This After 50+ Projects When someone asks me what I do, the honest answer has changed over the years. Early on, … Read more…
Why I Built a Free WordPress Security Scanner
I built WP Vanguard because I got tired of finding out about security problems the wrong way. Here is the founder story behind the free WordPress security scann…
Introducing Jetonomy: A New WordPress Forum Plugin Built for Scale
Jetonomy is a free, open-source WordPress forum plugin with dedicated database tables, trust levels for self-moderation, Q&A spaces, idea voting, and 61+ R…
Stop Specializing. Master Everything. AI Makes It Possible.
The ‘specialize in one stack’ advice is dead. AI collapsed the learning curve. Now you master everything because you can — and because you have to.…
Micro Jobs Are Dead. Here’s What Replaces Them.
The $500 WordPress gigs are getting automated. The future belongs to developers who think like enterprise architects and execute with AI speed.…
Everyone’s Quitting Software Dev. I Just Rebuilt My Entire Product Line.
While Reddit debates quitting software development, I discarded our entire old addon library and rebuilt from scratch with AI. Here’s what actually happen…
bbPress vs wpForo vs Jetonomy: The Past, The Present, and The Future of WordPress Communities
A hands-on comparison of bbPress, wpForo, and Jetonomy from someone who has built WordPress communities with all three — features, performance, BuddyPress integ…
WordPress vs Webflow in 2026: An Agency Owner’s Honest Comparison
An honest, experience-based comparison of WordPress and Webflow from an agency owner who has built with both — covering pricing, lock-in, customization, and whe…
WordPress vs Astro in 2026: What You’re Actually Trading When You Go Static
We are in the middle of converting store.wbcomdesigns.com to Astro. So I am not writing this from a position of theory or fear. I … Read more…
What I Include in My WordPress Maintenance Retainers (and What I Charge)
What actually goes into a WordPress maintenance retainer — plugin conflicts, server differences, security monitoring, and how I price the work honestly. Real nu…
How I Built a Private AI Assistant for WordPress That Never Sends Data to OpenAI
How I built WP Private AI — an open-source proof of concept that runs an AI chat assistant entirely on your own server using Ollama and llama3.1:8b, with zero d…