Category: Guides
Docker & Python with Background CRON runner
Since January, I’ve worked full-time in Django and Wagtail development. In my last post, I shared my Dockerfile for deploying such projects. That Dockerfile includes a multi-stage build to reduce the final image size and to improve security. This directly builds on that Dockerfile. The Dockerfile The important part here is lines 48-50. We’re copying […]
Writing a Minimal Wagtail, Poetry & Node Dockerfile
Over the last few months, I have worked extensively on several Wagtail projects. Off the back of this, I have decided to pivot from focusing on WordPress development in favour of Django and Wagtail. A big consideration that has come with this decision is managing the deployment of my projects. As a big Docker advocate, […]
How To Run Pygame In The Browser
Introduction I’ve built several projects using Pygame, such as a solar system simulation and a Zelda-like dungeon crawler. My biggest frustration has always been the complexity of sharing the projects with others. As a web developer, I’m very accustomed to being able to share my work online. Enter: Pygbag. Demo In case you’re not familiar […]
Dokploy and docker-mailserver with 10/10 deliverability
I recently switched from Plesk to Dokploy as the platform on my VPS for hosting websites. I did this because I felt Dokploy offered more control, leaning into the Docker and build packs approach utilised by many hosting services such as Heroku or Netlify. It is self-hosted and adds no costs beyond my regular VPS […]
Valet-Linux on WSL Ubuntu: Windows 11
This article will assume you have Ubuntu 24.04 installed on your Windows 11 computer via WSL. You should understand the basics of Ubuntu’s package manager apt, as well as the basics for terminal usage. Valet is Laravel’s tool for local development. It simplifies managing Nginx and PHP when working on multiple projects. I’ve always used […]
WireGuard VPN for an open NAT (wg-easy)
What Is NAT? In the words of a brief Google search: “NAT stands for Network Address Translation, a service that allows private networks to use the internet and cloud. It works by translating private IP addresses to a public IP address before sending packets to an external network.” To translate that description to the problem […]
Dockerise Django and NPM with Multi-Stage Builds
Introduction I’ve recently started learning Django, the popular web development framework for Python. Until now, as a PHP developer, I’ve been rather spoiled with the ease of deploying projects thanks to software such as cPanel or Plesk. Having reached the stage of wanting to deploy my first Django project, I realised that Docker would be […]
Auto-refresh the Browser on File Save with Django
Introduction I’ve recently started learning Python’s Django framework and have brought my favourite JavaScript framework along with me: TailwindCSS. From a development standpoint, I find that TailwindCSS feels much more efficient when I don’t have to refresh the page every time I make a change. At first, I wasn’t entirely certain about how I could […]
How To Correctly Size WordPress Images
Introduction This is a bit of a minefield topic, as there are a lot of plugins and ‘solutions’ out there that require you to pay money or install bloated software to accomplish something WordPress is designed to handle. In this post, I will show you how to have WordPress generate specific sizes for your images […]
Hosting Updateable WordPress Plugins on GitHub
Introduction If, like me, you enjoy writing custom plugins for WordPress, you may know the daunting feeling of managing the versions of your plugins across many websites. While you can use a PHP package manager like Composer for your plugins, this isn’t appropriate for most WordPress deployments. For most, using WordPress’ interface to install and […]