This is the first post on here, so it seems fair to actually say something useful instead of just announcing that a blog exists now. I graduated from App Academy a little over five years ago and have been building websites professionally ever since — mostly WordPress, mostly for clients who just need their site to work. A few things about that job have stuck with me enough to be worth writing down.

The bootcamp gets you in the door, not the answers

App Academy was 1,800 hours of genuinely hard work, and I don’t want to undersell it — it’s the reason I have a career. But almost none of the specific things I use day to day (WP Engine deploys, Gutenberg block patterns, cleaning up a client’s broken checkout flow at 5pm on a Friday) were things anyone taught me directly. What the bootcamp actually gave me was the ability to get unstuck on my own, fast, in an unfamiliar codebase. That turned out to be the entire job.

Boring code is a feature

Early on I equated “good developer” with “writes clever code.” These days I’d rather hand off a site to a client, or to a future version of myself, and have it be obvious what everything does. Clear naming, minimal indirection, no abstraction until there are actually three or more places that need it. It’s not a glamorous way to write code, but it’s the difference between a six-month-old project being a quick fix and being an afternoon of archaeology.

The stack matters less than the client thinks it does

I’ve shipped sites on WordPress block themes, Elementor, WooCommerce, and Shopify, and I’ve stopped having a strong opinion about which one is “correct.” The right stack is the one the client can actually maintain after I’m gone, that matches their budget, and that doesn’t fight the thing they’re trying to sell. Picking a tool because it’s the one I personally enjoy using is a good way to hand someone a site they’re afraid to touch.

I’m planning to use this space for more of the practical stuff — WordPress notes, freelance lessons, the occasional trip or hike if it derails the schedule enough to be worth mentioning. More soon.