Gary Bell | Building software. Leading teams.

Replatforming a fifteen-year-old PHP codebase to Laravel without a dedicated rewrite project, using a business deadline as the forcing function instead.

Freelancing after redundancy isn't starting from zero.

You fix the foundations when you find the moment, not when it's convenient.

A PHP setting called max_input_vars, a client with 10,000+ fields, and a silent data truncation that took a while to track down.

What three different companies taught me about the gap between what's convenient to build and what actually holds up as a team grows.

The Kind of Manager I Never Want to Be: What I Missed First

How a missing PHP extension silently broke a client's data import while I was on holiday, and what it taught me about environment parity.

A practical look at what an in-house development team really costs a non-tech business, and the questions worth asking before you assume it's worth it.

An honest technical assessment I never got asked for: whether our platform was still worth what it cost, before the redundancies that followed.

I came back from holiday on a Monday.

Typing gets in the way of thinking.

Three years, a redundancy, a new role, and a better workflow.

If you're reading this you will already know what ChatGPT is to some degree.

It's been over a year since I last has a Tanuki Tuesday post.

Technically, these instructions should work on most Debian based systems (Ubuntu, pop_OS etc.), but this is the process I go through when setting up…

Time to round up and so a side-by-side comparison of the hosts I looked at last week.

We're finally at the end of my series about cheap web hosting.

This is the fourth installment of my series looking at cheap web hosting.

Overview Hostinger is a provider which looks to offer a wide range of options to host websites or Minecraft servers on.

In today's edition of my cheap web hosting series, I look at the host at the number 2 spot in Digital.com's "best web hosting" list, SiteGround.

Welcome to the first in my series comparing cheap web hosting.

In the middle of 2022, I was approached by Digital.com to share some of their resources with my audience here.

When it comes to running a website, there's a couple of obvious ways to go; shared hosting, or self hosting.

It's been nearly a year since I last posted, but that's not for a lack of ideas.

Welcome to Tanuki Tuesday [__GHOST_URL__/tag/tanuki-tuesday/], where I look at the features offered by GitLab.

If you run a website you probably want to know how much traffic you are getting.

Way back in June 2020, I wrote a post about how not all developers need 4k screens [__GHOST_URL__/not-all-developers-need-a-4k-monitor/].

As is so often the case with blog posts, you start writing one and then hit writers block.

It's been nearly a year since I looked at the benefits of a static site generator [__GHOST_URL__/static-site-generators/], which I followed up with some PHP…

I've recently rearranged my home office space, and I now have a standing desk.

So you're still on a Magento 1 installation for your e-commerce website.

Back in April I took time to reflect on my 2021 goals.

Somehow it's April already.

I've previously posted about how to create a release with GitLab and Composer.

Welcome to Tanuki Tuesday, where I look at the features offered by GitLab.

Preface I had intended to submit this to DigitalOcean as a post, but the topics they require for their community posts don't fit the content of this post.

Welcome to Tanuki Tuesday [__GHOST_URL__/tag/tanuki-tuesday/], where I look at the features offered by GitLab.

Until very recently I had never used an Apple Mac device.

Welcome to Tanuki Tuesday [__GHOST_URL__/tag/tanuki-tuesday/], where I look at the features offered by GitLab.

Following the nightmare that was 2020, and the losses of jobs which happened, this may seem like an odd statement.

Group vs Project labels Welcome to Tanuki Tuesday [__GHOST_URL__/tag/tanuki-tuesday/], where I look at the features offered by GitLab.

LastPass has been my go-to password manager for as long as I can remember.

Welcome to Tanuki Tuesday [__GHOST_URL__/tag/tanuki-tuesday/], where I look at the features offered by GitLab.

I've previously loosely covered static site generators [__GHOST_URL__/static-site-generators/] and mentioned that they can bring performance benefits to a…

Welcome to Tanuki Tuesday [__GHOST_URL__/tag/tanuki-tuesday/], where I look at the features offered by GitLab.

Regardless of where you live on the planet, you will be aware of Covid-19, the novel Coronavirus strain.

Welcome to Tanuki Tuesday [__GHOST_URL__/tag/tanuki-tuesday/], where I look at the features offered by GitLab.

Ever since I used Gitpod as part of some early access with GitLab [__GHOST_URL__/getting-started-with-gitlabs-cloud-development-kit/] I've wanted to use the…

Welcome to Tanuki Tuesday, where I look at the features offered by GitLab.

There is more and more focus on the performance of a website, and the effect performance has on search engine rankings.