Simon Blackbourn
lumpylemon.co.uk
Simon Blackbourn
@lumpylemon.co.uk
This is my work account for all things WordPress / WooCommerce / Kirby / web development (lumpylemon.co.uk)

My personal account for photography / art / Dartmoor / nature / random stuff, is bsky.app/profile/simonblackbourn.net
My mum
November 22, 2025 at 9:43 AM
I switched a few months ago. They definitely pay artists more (see the table at www.soundguys.com/tidal-vs-spo...). Overall I'm happy. It's very similar really, nothing substantially better but definitely not worse either. My hearing isn't good enough to appreciate the difference in sound quality!
TIDAL vs Spotify
TIDAL vs Spotify: both have great offerings, but which music streaming service is the best one for you? Our showdown will help you decide.
www.soundguys.com
October 8, 2025 at 3:33 PM
Thank you for your kind words :)
September 30, 2025 at 9:02 PM
It's both. The choice of CMS (and plugins) can have a massive effect on front-end performance. Kirby is super fast because it's built to be fast, has a built-in caching system, and there's no database. But absolutely yes, a poorly coded theme could easily negate all that.
June 23, 2025 at 2:50 PM
We have exactly the right amount of hair. Many other men sadly suffer from a medical condition with no known cure that causes constant over-production of head hair, requiring regular costly trips to barbers and expensive cleaning products to treat it, and results in poor aerodynamics when cycling.
June 2, 2025 at 7:19 AM
All good thanks, hope you are too. I'm not near Plymouth, I live right in the very middle of it - big change from rural Dartmoor 😀
May 30, 2025 at 9:44 AM
I'm trying Zen again as it has most of Arc's features, just much less intuitive to set up. Hoping it's less buggy than it was a few months back when I last tried it. It's my preferred option being an open source project.
May 29, 2025 at 9:50 AM
So annoying. I also think Arc is great, it's my main browser and by far the best I've used. The problem is the VC-driven, AI obsessed business model, constantly in search of something that will rake in the billions for them. Personally I'd pay good money for a browser with no AI whatsoever in it.
May 29, 2025 at 6:52 AM
I can't see the price anywhere on the pricing page?
May 27, 2025 at 8:35 PM
This is my approach too, it's worked really well for me for years. I use it in combination with either the command line (an alias that pulls the plugin and the theme and then flushes the caches) or with DeployHQ / DeployBot.
March 27, 2025 at 12:56 PM
I was about to buy it, but then someone gave me a different one for free which they no longer needed
January 28, 2025 at 9:16 PM
A friend recommended this one to me amzn.eu/d/0Pkuv6m
OWC Thunderbolt Hub - Thunderbolt 4 Hub with 5 ports for Mac and Windows : Amazon.co.uk: Computers & Accessories
Buy
amzn.eu
January 28, 2025 at 2:41 PM
Definitely some truth in that, but I've seen v good PHP devs waste lots of time and write overly complex/redundant code on WordPress projects because they didn't know wp_ functions, the loop, classes, which plugins to use/trust, etc. So a deep knowledge of the platform & ecosystem is essential too.
November 29, 2024 at 12:22 PM
Do you know the Extended CPTs library (github.com/johnbillion/...)? I use it on pretty much every site I build. It provides flexible options for the taxonomy UI (as well as many other things).
November 28, 2024 at 11:25 AM
I'm pretty sure that register_post_type already defaults to false, but register_taxonomy defaults to true? I always set the value on both, but I'm sure plenty of plugins don't, so I'd be extremely wary of changing the defaults for functions that have been around for so long.
November 28, 2024 at 11:19 AM
Complianz (free for some clients, premium for others)
November 28, 2024 at 9:52 AM
I always include the name of the person too. E.g. "Support request from Jane Smith [ticket no. 3485]". It stops the threading and is more meaningful/memorable to me than just the ID by itself.
November 21, 2024 at 8:18 PM
I wrote a must-use plugin that checks the WP_ENVIRONMENT_TYPE constant, and adds an admin bar node with the environment name on a bold background colour. Green for local, orange for staging, red for production.
November 19, 2024 at 5:45 PM