• 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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