Faster editorial search with the WordPress REST API
A client with 15,000 archived articles lost hours a week to slow front-end search. The fix was the REST API plus the _fields parameter, queried from a local tool rather than a browser tab.
Tag: APIs
Overlapping CSS avatars that respond to their container
A Meet the Team row of overlapping avatars broke every time the client added a person. Here is the CSS that works out the negative margin itself, using sibling-count() and container query units.
Modern CSS architecture over a heavy JavaScript library
A JavaScript library added for smooth page transitions hijacked every internal link on a WooCommerce store. Pulling it out and using View Transitions, namespaced classes and accessibility tokens fixed more than it broke.
Your CAPTCHA is blocking customers and letting bots in
A reCAPTCHA v2 install stopped a WooCommerce shop’s registration spam and about 15% of its real conversions with it. Turnstile, magic links and a honeypot field did the job without locking customers out.
AI Overviews are cutting your WordPress traffic
A client’s organic traffic fell off a cliff and nothing on their site was broken. Google had started answering the queries itself. Here is what I checked, and where the real work sits in a WordPress build.
Modern CSS can replace most of your UI JavaScript
A WooCommerce site was choking on jQuery and Intersection Observers just to run a hover gallery and a filter menu. CSS Wrapped 2025 covers the native features that made most of that script unnecessary.
How to measure feature impact with the TARS framework
We shipped a Quick Reorder button for a WooCommerce client and the conversion rate never moved. The problem was the metric, not the button. TARS breaks feature success into target audience, adoption, retention and satisfaction.
CSS masonry layout is now display: grid-lanes
A client wanted a Pinterest-style WooCommerce gallery, which used to mean Masonry.js or fragile grid math. The CSS Working Group settled on display: grid-lanes instead, and it is still rolling out behind flags.
Shadow DOM beat my 30,000 lines of legacy CSS
A 30,000-line stylesheet taught me that BEM cannot outrun global scope. Web components and the Shadow DOM can, and the idea goes back to a 1998 proposal for HTML components.
Smooth scroll animations with CSS and no JS library
A WooCommerce homepage carousel was wrecking Core Web Vitals. Dropping the JS slider for CSS animation-timeline and view() cut the script weight and pulled the LCP score back into the green.