March 2026 desktop wallpapers, and the high-res asset problem
The Smashing Magazine wallpaper set for March 2026, including the Cascade Style Sheet design, plus the add_image_size code I use so high-res art does not slow down a WordPress theme.
Category: Design
From a DIY site to a professional WordPress website
Jason Stockill built his son’s racing site himself, then handed it to a design service once it needed a WooCommerce store, a newsletter and a championship history. What changes when a site stops being a brochure.
Why sustainable UX design is now a performance metric
WordPress sites carry more digital weight than they need. This post covers dark-first themes, lighter image formats like AVIF, and trimming the “digital fat” that slows sites down and drains batteries.
Streak system design: timezones, race conditions and grace
A streak is not a counter you increment. Notes on the psychology that makes streaks work, the timezone and race condition bugs that break them, and why grace mechanisms belong in the design from the start.
Why your loading spinner should be an SVG, not a GIF
A 2MB GIF spinner is a network request competing with the content it is covering. Inline SVG loaders skip the request entirely, scale without blurring, and inherit theme colors through currentColor.
Responsive pyramidal grid with modern CSS layout logic
A pyramidal hexagon grid used to need JavaScript and negative margins. Modern CSS does it with grid auto-placement, sibling-index() and some triangular-number math, plus a fallback for narrow screens.
Empathy-centred UX framework for mental health apps
Mental health apps need more than clean code. This is the empathy-centred UX framework I use: progressive onboarding, low-stimulus interfaces, and a retention system that does not punish a missed day.
Agentic AI UX patterns that keep users in control
Agentic AI features need more than a good prompt. These are the patterns I use to keep users in control: intent previews, an autonomy dial, an action audit log with a working undo, and escalation when the model is not confident.
Building CSS bar charts with sibling-index() and attr()
Chart libraries are heavy for four bars. Here is a CSS Grid bar chart that uses sibling-index() and attr() to read its values straight off the markup, plus the PHP helper I use to render it in WordPress.
15 WordPress website examples and the architecture behind them
Fifteen real WordPress sites looked at as architecture rather than inspiration: which themes they run, how they handle search and subscriptions, and where the block editor quietly does the work a plugin usually gets credit for.