11 Aug 2025
Making PDFs more viewable
Because ‘Just give them the PDF’ isn’t good enough.
All writing
10 Jul 2025
Drupal delayed by Azure MySQL
Managed Azure Database for MySQL cost us 50%–80% slow down. After six months of pain, we moved our Drupal 10 site back to a classic VM and halved our page‑load times.
1 Jul 2025 | Project note
Recovering platform performance after a cloud migration failure
UNDRR's Azure migration followed the playbook — managed services, platform-as-a-service, letting the cloud handle complexity. Instead, performance degraded and user trust eroded.
8 May 2025
It’s been 3.5 years
A long-overdue update.
23 Dec 2021
Something new for 2022
This month, I’m saying goodbye to my projects at EMBL but my career in web work continues.
21 Dec 2021
Enabling a more dynamic EMBL online
From contentHub to VF 2.0: foundations for faster, more flexible journeys across One EMBL.
30 Aug 2021
EMBL.org: Empowering users to navigate a large scientific organization
We tamed the ‘footmap’ by introducing a more effective directory pattern.
30 Aug 2021 | Project note
Untangling an 80-link footer into scannable navigation
EMBL.org's footer had become a screen-and-a-half of densely packed links — failing users and stakeholders alike.
21 Dec 2020 | Project note
Decoupling content from platforms across 80 properties
EMBL's 80+ properties ran on different CMSs — and content was trapped in each one.
12 Dec 2020
Using Nunjucks templates with React
A lightweight React wrapper with precompiled Nunjucks
11 Nov 2020
Lerna monorepos with fewer tags
Getting the perks of monorepo publishing while curating our git tags and release notes.
13 Jul 2020
Moving from Panini to Eleventy
Back in February 2018, I wrote about updating this site to use a static-site generator by Zurb (makers of the Foundation Framework) called Panini.
8 Feb 2020
Publishing since the 2000s
In a career of 20 years, the more things change the more they stay the same.
18 Nov 2019
Building your first page with the Visual Framework 2.0
A quick start on how to work with Visual Framework 2.0 CSS, JS and structure your HTML — and lots of links to learn more.
12 Nov 2019
Fractal and Eleventy: Getting static sites closer to the design system
For the Visual Framework 2.0 component system we recommend Eleventy for static sites: Eleventy sites get direct access to component templates with associated metadata and a focused component library.