• From the perspective of the audience, a Black man in a dark suit jacket stands on a stage, speaking at a small lectern. Behind him, a large screen on a wood-paneled wall displays "STARTING SOON..." in large white text, along with the event logo "// CVC2025" and various sponsor logos.

    Re-energized to Build: Lessons from Commit Your Code

    Last week, I stepped outside my usual WordPress comfort zone to attend Commit Your Code 2025. As an introvert, it was a significant leap, but I came away re-energized, inspired to build more, share my creations, and connect with fellow developers. This post recaps my experience, the incredible talks, and the action items I’m excited…

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    Reigniting My Development Passion: The Story Behind ArtisanPack UI’s Creation

    Every developer faces burnout, and I was no exception while building Digital Shopfront CMS. I realized the traditional path wasn’t sustainable for creating new tools for small businesses. Discover how solving my own scaling problem led to the creation of ArtisanPack UI, a suite of reusable Laravel components designed to reignite development passion and empower…

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    Crafting a Figma Design System as a Web Developer

    As a web developer, design has always been a hurdle. I decided to tackle it head-on by building my own custom Figma design system. Discover my process for creating an efficient workflow that empowers every project and helps me deliver better results for small businesses.

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  • A workspace on a wooden desk featuring an open laptop, a white mug of black coffee, a flipped-over notepad with a pen, and a smartphone.
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    What I’ve Been Up to Lately

    It’s been a busy middle of the year, filled with a massive website migration at work, a university name change, and several personal projects. Despite the chaos, I managed to squeeze in a fun family vacation to Kansas City and Omaha, attend Laracon US online, update my personal dashboard app, and make significant progress on…

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    Looking at the Digital Shopfront CMS Repository

    As work continues on creating Digital Shopfront CMS, I wanted to take a moment to explain the repository structure. So let’s dive into why I chose GitLab over GitHub and how the project is set up.

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    What I’ve Learned with Laravel After a Few Months

    Because of *gestures wildly* everything going on in the WordPress landscape, I’ve started taking a look at the web development world outside of WordPress. And I think I’ve fallen in love with Laravel. It’s reignited my passion for web development and reminded me of why I got into web dev in the first place.

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  • a person with a shirt with the WordPress "W" logo on it at a standing desk typing on a keyboard

    Why I’m Leaving WordPress

    This is a blog post that’s honestly a half-year in the making and probably a couple of months too late, but here it goes anyway. I’m leaving WordPress. Well … mostly leaving WordPress, but we’ll get to the last surviving thread of WP connectivity at the end of this post. But yeah, with all of…

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    Introducing Digital Shopfront Content Management System

    I’m building a new content management system. What started out as sort of a crazy idea I had while driving to the Great Smoky Mountains last fall is starting to turn into a real thing. Here’s what I’m planning with Digital Shopfront CMS.

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  • a person taking a photo of a butterfly on a flower with a DSLR camera
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    How to Add Alternative Text to Your Photos on Social Media

    Social media is a great place to share your photos. But in our rush to share our cool photos, we very often miss one crucial step: adding alternative text. So here’s how to add alt text to your photos on social media.

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    Redesigning My Personal Website

    As a web designer and developer, there’s always a temptation to redesign your personal website. So, since it’s been over a year since I last redesigned this site, I think it’s time to redo this website again. Here’s the plan for the redesign.

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    A Look Back at 2024 and Looking Forward to 2025

    Welcome to 2025! It’s that time of the year when people reflect on what happened in the past year and plan out what they hope to accomplish in the next year. So here’s what I’m hoping to accomplish this year.

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    Sports You Should Watch During the 2024 Summer Olympics

    The Summer Olympics are finally here. If you want to watch something other than the generic sports NBC thinks you want to watch, here are other sports to check out during the 2024 games.

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