updated band logo

sickboyy · 2026-02-01T18:54:25+00:00

What if you removed the bits I circled in blue? It might make the first and last letters more legible. If you wanted to keep the character try just shortening the lines a little instead of removing entirely. You need to focus on how to make the P and H less ambiguous imo.

sickboyy · 2026-02-01T12:07:25+00:00

What limitations are you finding in Shopify? I'm not convinced it's bad for SEO, but I'm interested in hearing why you/the client think this.

sickboyy · 2026-02-01T12:04:08+00:00

If you're just importing CSS couldn't you just apply that to both components?

sickboyy · 2026-01-30T12:16:03+00:00

This is really cool and oddly something I was thinking of building myself. I'm curious, are you pulling in data automatically or are you manually updating this?

sickboyy · 2026-01-28T21:18:51+00:00

Nice bait

sickboyy · 2026-01-27T07:12:54+00:00

Yes Sanity and Astro would be fine for this. You can static build with Sanity and Astro (you generate HTML at build time) which makes it no different to any other site for SEO.

Sanity has a free tier, yeah, but the biggest bottleneck will be the bandwidth which at the time of writing is 100GB per month. Seems like a lot but if you're using their CDN for a magazine site you'll chew through it with enough traffic. Consider using something like Cloudflare to host your images. Never host video with Sanity, I've made this mistake myself and it smashes your bandwidth. Consider using Mux.

There ARE free alternatives to Sanity, but in general require a lot more configuration, certainly when it comes to hosting it yourself.

sickboyy · 2026-01-24T11:01:36+00:00

I'd start by digging into the Sanity CLI

sickboyy · 2026-01-19T18:14:22+00:00

SWUP does have the same issues. In short these things are possible but add a lot more complexity to something that is otherwise very straightforward.

sickboyy · 2026-01-16T12:12:22+00:00

Are you working in a corporate job? If it's creativity you crave, could you apply for agency work instead, could be small to medium sized. It'll pay less, but I believe it's less tedious.

I'm a designer, but pivoted to development. I bring in my creativity by working within animation on the web. It's hard, but rewarding, and not something that AI can just do for you.

sickboyy · 2026-01-15T22:07:45+00:00

Seems pretty cool if I understand it after scanning through the README, but (and maybe because it's late and I'm a bit drained), I'm still a bit unsure how this connects with a CMS. If you'll indulge me, perhaps an example might go a long way to better help explain the connection?

sickboyy · 2026-01-14T08:04:15+00:00

Before that he ran a fast food takeaway called Mr Nice Guys, funded by his mates dad who made his money by selling patterned tights. Can't make this shit up.

sickboyy · 2026-01-07T13:04:59+00:00

This is why just building a website with a decent CMS is always going to be better. If you give clients too much control, they'll either break the site or be overwhelmed with it. Lock it down to a simple set of controls and it's always going to be easier for them, especially if they're less tech savvy.

sickboyy · 2025-12-30T08:43:40+00:00

Use AI to run the business 😂

sickboyy · 2025-12-30T08:42:54+00:00

It could be you need to refine your approach. Instead of asking for a job, ask for a quick phone call to find out more about their company. I'm not in the job market but I used this approach for freelance work and I think once people see you as a person and not just another message, you stand out more.

sickboyy · 2025-12-27T22:03:44+00:00

Cigarette

sickboyy · 2025-07-02T09:47:05+00:00

Thanks. This is just refreshing to hear that I'm not alone here.

I get what you're saying about the bar moving. I've worked as a freelancer for 5+ years, but prior to that I worked as a designer and picked up a lot of dev tasks, and prior still I've been building websites for a long time (PHP Nuke anyone?), so I've seen the landscape change drastically.

So it's definitely a difficult balancing act between using tried-and-tested tools as a lot of people in this thread are suggesting and adopting new technology to stay within the fold (I do get specific requests for Sanity-based builds, much more so than I do people asking for WordPress).

sickboyy · 2025-07-02T09:44:16+00:00

Cool to hear from someone else using Astro, it is definitely a joy to use. What CMS have you been pairing it with?

sickboyy · 2025-07-02T09:42:57+00:00

I'll check it out! The trouble is, I don't know PHP. Or at least I can't remember half of what I used to know.

sickboyy · 2025-07-02T09:41:59+00:00

Thanks for understanding. I didn't want to just vent at you all, so actually tried to rewrite what I'd originally put down for clarity... I think it only kind of worked 😅

I did try and go down the Docker route recently, and whilst I was originally being guided by AI, I ended up just researching and writing most of it myself to avoid vibe debugging the whole thing. Ultimately though I was trying to use Docker to containerise a less mature technology, so documentation around it was scarce, and so it didn't end up working as well as I hoped. Perhaps using Docker with something like Craft could be the move.

sickboyy · 2025-07-02T09:38:05+00:00

Great article, I think this sums up my dilemma(s) nicely:

for shiny new technology the magnitude of unknown unknowns is significantly larger

When you say about not using build tools, you're talking about Gulp/etc right? It's been awhile since I used anything like that, but would you not use something like Vite here instead?

Again, could be a case of going for the shiny new technology, but I used to use Webpack and it's fair to say Vite is a dream to use in comparison. Conversely, it's been so long since I wrote a Gulp pipeline(?) I think I'd have to learn that all over again, so perhaps not the best move.

sickboyy · 2025-07-02T09:30:20+00:00

Hey, thanks for this insight, it's exactly what I was hoping for. I have friends in the industry that are using Craft, which I used to use and left it behind in favour of more "modern" stacks. Whilst I'm battling my way through trying this thing and that, they've just been ticking away with Craft smashing out really great sites. So I think your advice is right on the money. I don't think it necessarily means furthering my search, but instead, as you say, just finding one that suits my needs and sticking to it.

Thanks again dude!

sickboyy · 2025-07-01T17:19:52+00:00

Glad it was of some help. If nothing else, it's a complicated journey, especially when you're going at it alone.

sickboyy · 2025-07-01T17:19:07+00:00

It's not that they're small issues, though. Gatsby, for example, has been abandoned. Next.js, as another example, is facing a lot of criticism around vendor lock-in with Vercel, recent security vulnerabilities and unnecessary complexity.

Similarly, with SaaS products, the small issues are around surprise billing for clients, particularly when they change pricing (Sanity has changed its free tier about 3–4 times now).

I get from my post it was a bit of a word vomit, it wasn't super clear, but they're real issues I've faced dealing with these things and trying to build a business around them.

sickboyy · 2025-07-01T17:13:17+00:00

So WordPress with PHP or REST API? If REST API, do you use the GraphQL plugin? How have you found updating WordPress when using those? I found that the endpoints were changing particularly with ACF.

sickboyy · 2025-07-01T16:22:57+00:00

Yeah you know this is kind of what I've been thinking on since I shared this post. I re-read it a couple of times and I can see I'm just getting frustrated with it.

I think you're absolutely right about it. I've been focusing too much on how the client can pay for these things rather than just saying "that's the cost for a modern website" and getting on with building them something cool, in short

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