Performance optimization Practical
The N+1 problem: get_post_meta in a loop, and priming
WP_Query primes caches for its own results only. A hand-built list of IDs gets none of that for free — and that difference decides your query count.
Technote
WordPress know-how, from real work Technotes worth picking
203 articles
Themes & plugins Practical
Template parts: give shared markup a single owner
Duplicated markup always drifts. You fix one copy, the other stays wrong, and nobody notices until the two screens disagree.
Development workflow Practical
Safe search-replace: serialisation, guid and dry runs
Replace a domain with raw SQL and widget and theme settings quietly go blank. Serialised data stores string lengths — and switching tools removes the problem entirely.
Themes & plugins Practical
Icon fonts, SVG sprites or inline SVG?
All three draw the same picture on screen. What differs is how many colours you can use, what assistive technology hears, and how many icons actually ship to…
Development workflow Practical
Priority wars: whoever speaks last wins
Priority is a queue position, not authority. Raising your number is a move the other side can also make, and jumping behind a translation filter sends the untranslated…
Security Practical
wp-config and secrets: keeping per-environment values out of the repo
A committed secret is a leaked secret. Rewriting history does not take it back, and the only remaining fix is rotation.
SEO Practical
Record what happened, not which button moved
An event called "button 3 clicked" loses its meaning the moment the page changes. "Enquiry submitted" still means the same thing after a redesign.
Servers & infrastructure Practical
Why enquiry mail lands in spam — three records explained
The form submits fine, but no mail arrives. The cause is usually the sending path, not the form — and three DNS records that prove who sent it…
SEO Intro
Three Search Console screens to check every week
Search Console has many screens; three are worth a weekly look. Decide which question each answers and the whole routine takes fifteen minutes.
Performance optimization Practical
When field and lab data disagree, which do you believe?
Lab data is one reproducible run under controlled conditions; field data is the distribution of what real customers experienced. When they disagree, they are answering different questions.
SEO Intro
Tags and categories: how many archives should search see?
Tag freely, but do not push every tag into search. Separate subject from audience and difficulty — and decide deliberately which archives get indexed.
Themes & plugins Practical
Dark mode should be a decision, not a default
Dark mode is not one feature; it doubles the surface you must maintain and verify. Some sites have a clear reason for it, and some do not.
Cited
Technotes worth reading next
Topics outside WordPress are collected on Dongji Communication Tech Insights, run by the same team. The summaries below are quoted from the originals; the titles link to them.
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Working with AI
Writing a CLAUDE.md — teaching an AI coding assistant your project
AI coding tools such as Claude Code, Cursor and Copilot do better work the more precisely they know your project. Here is a structure and a set of principles that hold up.
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Working with AI
Prompting an AI for UI design — drafting with Claude and GPT
Asking an AI to "make a nice button" gets you a disappointing button. Structured prompts that carry constraints, references and a defined role get you the design you meant.
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Themes & plugins
SCSS from the ground up — variables through module structure
The core syntax of SCSS (Sass) and what it solves that plain CSS cannot: variables, nesting, mixins, @use and module structure — organised around patterns you can use immediately.
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Themes & plugins
Design tokens and theme colour systems — brand identity in SCSS variables
How to turn a colour palette from a pile of hex codes into a system that means something — semantic token structure and SCSS variable patterns, from a real project.
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Performance optimization
Designing a responsive typography system — the science of readability
Hard-coded pixel font sizes are over. Type scales, fluid sizing with clamp(), Korean webfont optimisation and line-height ratios — building typography that reads well on any screen.
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Development workflow
From Figma to SCSS — a designer-developer handoff guide
Minimising what gets lost between a Figma file and the code: extracting tokens, naming components, keeping the spacing system in sync — the whole workflow, step by step.