Writings

A few years from now, I think we'll look back and find it a little strange that we ever bolted page builders onto WordPress. Here's the thought I can't shake. AI is astonishingly good at HTML. Ask it for a hero, a pricing table, a whole landing page, and it writes clean, semantic markup in…

When I was running WordPress courses, someone once copied my website almost word for word. They copied the headlines, the structure, the sales copy, the lot. They were so lazy they even copied my phone number. So I started getting calls from people trying to book courses through their website, which was both annoying and…

What happens when AI stops generating pages and starts generating design systems? Over the last few months I’ve become convinced of three things. First, AI is incredibly good at HTML. Not “surprisingly decent” good. Genuinely good. It can produce layouts, components, responsive designs, and entire interfaces faster than most humans can. I wrote more about…

If you’ve ever shared a WordPress Playground link and watched someone wonder where to click next, this is for you. I’ve been experimenting with a new feature on pootleplayground.com called Guided Tours. Here’s a live example: https://pootleplayground.com/p/5ai0uv Open the link and you’ll be guided through WordPress step by step. The idea is simple: instead of…

Or: Why British Government Is Basically a Washing Machine Stuck on Spin Cycle Every few years, a politician stands at a lectern, looks serious, and announces that power is going to be devolved. This week it was Andy Burnham. The speech is usually accompanied by words like local empowerment, community leadership, decision-making closer to the…

I asked Claude to spend time inside both the WordPress Site Editor and the block editor, click everything, break things, and report back. This is that report. What follows is Claude's analysis of where WordPress is today, what works well, where friction remains, and how the editing experience might evolve in the future. To find…

WordPress is a brilliant publishing platform, but let’s be honest about the writing experience: the moment you click “Add New Post” you’re staring at admin bars, sidebars, settings panels, block inserters, and a dozen things competing for your attention. None of that helps you write. It helps you configure. Jamie’s Distraction-Free Writer strips all of…

Over the past few months I've been exploring a simple idea. AI has become remarkably good at generating HTML. Not just acceptable HTML, but genuinely beautiful, well-structured landing pages that would have taken me hours to build by hand. I've found myself reaching for ChatGPT to design pages more often than traditional page builders. The…

I've spent the last five years making WordPress videos. For a long time, the formula was fairly simple. Build something useful, make a good tutorial, publish it, and people would watch. I don't think that's true anymore. The problem isn't that people have stopped caring about websites. The problem is that attention has become much…

ChatGPT might be the best WordPress page builder I’ve ever used. Which sounds ridiculous. But I’m not sure it is. Last night, I rebuilt my wife’s yoga studio website using ChatGPT and WordPress. The reason it worked so well is speed of creative iteration. Inside one chat, I can work with something that feels like…

Publishing a plugin to the WordPress.org directory has a reputation for being fiddly — and that reputation is earned. You have to zip your files in exactly the right shape, hand-check a readme.txt against rules you can’t see, install developer tools to run the official “Plugin Check,” fill in a web form, and — once…

Today, the UK government announced plans to ban social media for under-16s. Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the restrictions are needed to protect children’s wellbeing and mental health. Slightly to my own surprise, I think they are right. This is awkward for me. I am a huge free speech advocate. If something is legal, broadly…

The problem with AI builders is not the first demo. It is the third rebuild. I have used Lovable, Bolt, Replit and Base44 a lot. They are brilliant at getting you from idea to working prototype quickly. You describe the app, it creates the interface, wires up the logic, adds authentication, connects a database, and…

If you are a non-technical but want to build stuff in WordPress with AI, bookmark this. This is the cheat sheet I wish I had when I started vibe coding. The trick is simple: Know what to ask AI to use. After reading this, you’ll know when to ask for blocks, plugins, the REST API,…

I had a slightly crazy idea. What if we stopped fighting the fact that AI is extremely good at creating HTML and instead made it easier for normal humans to edit it safely inside WordPress? So I built a tiny plugin called Vibe Code that makes raw HTML much easier to live with inside WordPress.…

I used to read The Tiger Who Came to Tea to my daughters. A tiger turns up unexpectedly and consumes absolutely everything. The food. The drinks. The water. Daddy’s beer. No restraint whatsoever. Increasingly, I think we are the tiger. Right now, many of us are absolutely gorging ourselves on AI. “Analyse this.” “Build me…

Here’s my simple guide to vibe coding in WordPress for non-techies. You do not need to become a developer. You do not need to understand complicated code. But there are a handful of ideas worth understanding before you start. Not because you need to become technical. Because understanding these ideas will dramatically improve the results…

Science fiction writer William Gibson once said: “The future is already here. It’s just not evenly distributed.” You can see this happening with websites right now. While many businesses are still proudly announcing they have “refreshed the homepage,” something much bigger is happening underneath. I’ve been deep diving, experimenting, and researching this for a while…

PootleWriter is a frictionless, always-on writing app for WordPress. Instead of logging into wp-admin every time you want to write, edit, or publish something, you can open PootleWriter and start creating straight away. No dashboard clutter. No hunting through menus. Just open the app and write. It connects directly to your WordPress site, so your…