How we built this site
Hand-written HTML, CSS and JavaScript: the graphics behind the home page, light and dark themes, generated cover art and pages that flow into each other.
Read moreWhat we've learned
Ideas, lessons and the odd opinion from twenty years of building web applications around the way teams actually work.
Security in layers
How we approach security in the software we build, from the data centre to the browser, and why each layer assumes the one in front of it might fail.
Read moreFour ways to put AI to work in your software
From search that understands questions to connecting your system to the assistant you already use, and whether AI should run in the cloud or on your own machines.
Read moreReplacing a system that's had its day
Lessons from moving long-running sites, with years of orders and enquiries, off an ageing platform while they kept trading.
Read moreConnecting to the systems you already run
Accounts packages, payment providers, Microsoft 365 and spreadsheets: what we've learned about making connections between systems dependable.
Read moreFrom weekly time cards to the whole company
An engineering company asked us to put its time cards online. Nearly ten years later, the same system runs most of the business. Here's how it grew.
Read moreOne place for every product and every photo
How a product photography studio swapped shared documents, spreadsheets and email for one system that tracks every product from shipping note to finished image.
Read moreSoftware that lasts
What keeps a business system useful for ten or fifteen years: building around the work, looking after the data, automated tests and upgrading little and often.
Read moreThe Mythical Man‑Month, half a century on
Fred Brooks's 1975 classic explains why adding people to a late software project makes it later. What it still teaches anyone commissioning software.
Read moreWhat is a database application?
What a database does that a spreadsheet can't, what turns a database into an application, and how to tell when your team needs one.
Read moreWhere bespoke software saves time and money
Off-the-shelf software is cheaper to buy. Software built around your process is often cheaper to run. Here's where the difference comes from.
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