The Connectors screen in WP 7.0 would really benefit from encrypted options unless we want to expose those API keys to anyone with access to wp-admin/options.php

ChatGPT wouldn't do it, Claude wouldn't do it. Eventually tried Perplexity and it was able to generate notes with correct code snippets from my WordPress course videos. Amazing since it didn't have to invent anything -- just capture everything I said and include the relevant code snippets.

WordPress block development with breakpoint debugging for JS is a life-changer! So is PHP breakpoints, to be honest. Instead of hunting for the correct file in the browser console, you just add breakpoints in VS Code and it automatically stops JS at that point to show you the full state.

When can we reasonably expect all macOS apps to use the correct squircle radius? I can't believe VSCode and Google Chrome are still different from the Finder or any of the built-in apps...

I can't believe I'm discovering the Apple Shortcuts just now. In one click it can now get my computer ready for screen recording -- it opens VS Code, web browser + recording app, and resizes the windows to fit a specific aspect ratio. The app is bundled with every Mac and iPhone since 2021.

Can AI help optimize your landing pages from actual user session data? We enabled user session recording using PostHog (which uses rrweb behind the scenes), and drove Meta ads to the page. Then used AI to extract those 36k+ events into a single file and asked it to analyze the results.

Turns out that building a "Clear formatting" feature for the WordPress block editor is more difficult than I imagined. Many blocks have the inner content as part of the `content` attribute but things get difficult with RichText, for example. Do you have a solution for this?

Trying to find an alternative to Screen Time for kids on macOS since it’s completely unreliable and the UX is terrible. AdGuard/PiHole with a macos user profile that enforces DNS seems like one option. Need to be local and selfhosted. Suggestions?

After sunsetting a VPS that was used for backup of other VPSes, I decided to have #restic send everything to a restic-rest instance (as docker container) on my #homelab NAS over #wireguard. Amazing how restic can backup to so many destinations (s3, sftp, http) over so many transports.

Add logging to my kitchen-sink WordPress plugin with handlers for error_log() and Query Monitor. Nice to have info/debug level data while developing and warnings+ on PROD. How are you handling this in your plugins?

Did you know that HTTP3 is already supported by 92% of browsers and can offer 10-20% performance improvements (mostly to LCP) especially for mobile users? Nginx added support for HTTP/3 two years ago in version 1.25.0 so it is available in most recent Linux distributions.

Did you know there is a way to check the historic web vitals for your sites from actual user data? Try it out here: cruxvis.withgoogle.com

Has anyone had luck registering for AliExpress API access? Getting auto-rejected and not sure what to try next.

Check out my updated /uses list with the latest gear and software changes from 2025: kaspars.net/uses

The #FAIR plugin for WP doesn’t like iOS Safari. Probably an outdated regex on user agent?

Amazing how little PHP can do so much! serverless.industries/2025/07/06/a... I also do 99% of prototyping in PHP. Fun idea from @[email protected]

Turns out HTTP Host headers can have a trailing dot (totally valid too) and nginx will happily forward it to php-fpm making $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] have a trailing dot which then fails all WP multisite domain lookups... First time seeing this on a fresh nginx + php 8.4 setup.

How do you profile PHPStan runs for performance issues? It appears to be spawning a child process even if maximumNumberOfProcesses is set 1 which makes the core logic invisible to XDebug profiler.

Trying out the new VS Code fork from Google. Requires Google login to actually use it... not sure I like this direction.

Feels like half the web is down now...

Cloudflare and other MITM proxies with TLS termination have access to your WP usernames and passwords, and every WooCommerce transaction (including customer billing and address data).

Version 3.0.0 of the Minit plugin for WordPress now defers the script bundle by default and uses this trick to support scripts with "after" logic (which require the parent to be loaded). Learn more here: github.com/kasparsd/minit

Has anyone seen WP add ?_t=... to image URLs? Couldn't find anything in the codebase where this is happening. This is causing WP to fail at generating the srcsets.

Improve the local development experience for your team and point *.local.yourproject.com to 127.0.0.1 using the public DNS. Here is how to configure it:

Everyone on Twitter now... The whole re-auth flow is completely broken. I'm using the correct key and it still goes into this infinite loop.

Has anyone created a /metrics REST API endpoint for WordPress that reports data about the WP instance -- object cache reads/writes/memory (from memcache/redis/apcu), php-fpm stats, system load, disk space, etc. Ideally, with Prometheus and OpenTelemetry output formats.

Here is a tip -- you don't need the defined( 'ABSPATH' ) checks in class files that don't run any code. PHP will simply do nothing when a class definition is loaded. I've noticed that AI is prone to adding it because of how WP core uses outside of class files.

Cmd+Z for restoring recently closed tab is really nice. That key combo is muscle memory for global undo. TIL: Zen browser and others use Cmd+Shift+T to do that.

“Knowing what matters for a specific thing is called being an expert. Knowing what matters over the course of a human life is called being wise.” commoncog.com/only-thing-t...

What’s your preferred service for hosting 1000TB of S3-like data (videos, images) with ~300TB/month egress? Backblaze B2 seems really nice but I’m looking for recommendations.

Did you know that *.wpenv.net (all subdomains) point to 127.0.0.1? Use it for local development and avoid editing hosts file or setting up custom NS resolver.

Finally moved away from 1Password 7 (which still had the iCloud sync) to Strongbox which uses KeePass behind the scenes. All started with trying out the Zen browser which doesn't work with the old 1Password extension 😅

whenever I see a `bet on ${currentHype}` because "the web is in decline" I just smirk because it's a great way of demonstrating you have no idea what you're actually talking about. the web outlives every "the web is dead, use this thing i like" and will continue to do so. always bet on the web.

Facebook Ad Manager feels like a time capsule of bad UX decisions. It's slow, confusing and somehow gets worse every year. A perfect case study in legacy product debt buried under layers of React.

Did you know that Google Tag Manager now supports server-side implementation which runs all the tag logic on your server? Since they only publish a Docker image of the server, I extracted and published the source in case you're interested.

This looks fun! Just joined. See you there.

Have you experieced “default to AI” in your work? Reading through verbose RFCs and PRDs filled with emojied lists accompanied by obviously vibe coded prototype pull requests, shared via AI composed emails and Slack threads is a sad experience.

Today I learned about the BIMI standard for adding a profile image or logo to your emails. It requires a DNS record that points to a SVG Tiny-P file URL. For this to work the domain must also have a valid and passing DMARC record with a “quarantine” or stricter policy.

ConvertKit is rising prices by 100% for the entry level plans. What is your prefered email newsletter service?

AI code generation is the ultimate copyright loophole -- trained on collective knowledge of copyrighted work and producing new work which is supposedly authored by the collective brain. Who owns the copyright for all the vibe-coded apps?

When did Google stop allowing custom emails for Google accounts (not workspace but regular accounts)?

First time seeing my blog mentioned in a Google AI overview. Remember hearing in a few recent interviews with Sundar Pichai that they're now adjusting the AI Overview placement to improve source attribution.

GitHub web UI is getting slower every week! Doing code reviews is a pain now. Use the GitHub Pull Request extension for VSCode to do them right in your editor -- leave inline comments, explore commit history, etc.

Sharing my recent numbers not to brag but to get feedback. I find it hard to make technical content engaging. What are the one or two things that have helped you get consistent replies and shares?

So many of the AI crawlers don't use JS-enabled browsers so you need to access raw HTTP access logs to see the actual requests. The problem is that most of this data is terminated at your CDN level and you might never know the true amount of referrals and crawlers. Attached is OpenAI traffic.

Has anyone built a WordPress version of Writebook for publishing books and manuals online? Here is the link: once.com/writebook

This is the amount of auth credentials Google expects you to pass for a simple API fetch from Google Analytics, for example. There is no way to do it with a simple API key string. Wow!

The combined WordPress documentation markdown files for LLMs now include the WP-CLI documentation!

Most WordPress plugins get abandoned not because nobody uses them but because the dev burns out. Paying for plugins isn't about features, it's about sustainability of reliable solutions.

Which user capability should have access to this post meta inspector modal in WordPress? Possibly with an option to edit fields directly.