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Longer guides, explainers and cheat sheets, for when you want to learn a tool, not just copy a fix.

A key ring with a brass key, a yellow tag showing a six-digit code and a dark fob with a fingerprint, hanging on a grey wall

Lesson Guides SFA, 2FA, MFA and passkeys: safer logins in plain English Turn on two-factor authentication everywhere, use passkeys where you can, keep your recovery codes safe, and let a password manager remember the rest. October 18, 2026 13 min read

A paper model of a restaurant service window with order tickets on a rail, covered plates on the ledge and a dark kitchen behind the wall

Lesson Explainers What is an API? How it works, how safe it is, and its limits An API lets one program ask another for data or actions. Learn requests, responses, pagination, rate limits, security, webhooks and how to test one with Postman. October 16, 2026 9 min read

A browser window showing six photos, with dotted lines linking each photo to a different data centre on a world map: North America, Europe, Asia and Australia

Lesson Guides Where to host your images: S3, R2 or your own server Small sites can keep images on their own server behind Cloudflare. Big or busy image libraries belong on Cloudflare R2, which charges nothing for downloads. October 15, 2026 7 min read

A padlock with a lime shackle in front of a website, under a glass shield that bounces off spiky attacks while envelopes pass through

Lesson Guides Cloudflare 101: set up the free plan, step by step Swap your nameservers to Cloudflare, turn on the orange cloud for your website records and set SSL to Full (strict). You get free speed, SSL and protection. October 7, 2026 11 min read

A globe with glowing lime server pins on several continents, linked by thin lines

Lesson Explainers When you need a cloud server, and why Vultr is a smart pick Need a server for a week, in another country or with more power? A Vultr cloud server starts in seconds, from 32 cities, billed by the hour. September 29, 2026 4 min read

A man at a desk scratching his head, looking at three cards on the wall that read WordPress, Shopify and Webflow

Lesson Explainers WordPress, Shopify or Webflow: which one do you need? Shopify if selling is the main job. WordPress with WooCommerce if content and control matter. Webflow if design comes first and your range is small. September 28, 2026 3 min read

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The folder layout Deployer creates on the server

Lesson Guides Deployer, the PHP deployment tool: get started Deployer puts PHP sites live with no downtime and rolls back with one command. Install it, write a deploy.php, deploy a Laravel or WordPress site and roll back. March 21, 2020 3 min read

Apache config code example from this post

Lesson Guides MAMP: set up a local site with a virtual host Give each local project its own address, like mysite.test, in MAMP on a Mac. I turn on virtual hosts, add the site, map the name in /etc/hosts and restart. September 6, 2019 3 min read

SQL code example from this post

Lesson Cheat sheets MySQL JOINs explained: INNER, LEFT, RIGHT, FULL, CROSS, self What each MySQL JOIN returns, shown with two small tables and the real rows that come back. Plus how I build a FULL OUTER JOIN, which MySQL doesn't have. August 21, 2019 7 min read

PHP code example from this post

Lesson Explainers What is Laravel Blade? Templates, layouts and components Blade is Laravel's template language. It gives you HTML files with {{ }} for safely escaped output, @ directives for loops and conditions, layouts and components. May 13, 2019 4 min read

The start of a README.md template

Lesson Explainers Add a README.md to every project (with a template) A good README tells the next developer what a project is, how to run it and how to deploy it. What I put in mine, a template to copy and the Markdown you need. February 22, 2019 3 min read