Cybersecurity often feels like another world, yet in recent years it’s a topic that I’ve become mildly obsessed with. As web and software developers, security is an integral part of what we do, but for the most part it is self-contained in terms of the code that we work on directly. That has to change.
Articles and insights into all things tech.

Sprig 1.1.0 adds Features & Security
Sprig 1.1.0 adds new features as well as some important security improvements. Most notably, Sprig now uses htmx 0.4.0 and adds template variables to paginate element queries, push URLs into the history stack, redirect and refresh the browser, trigger client-side events and more securely add values to a request.

Sprig and the Joy of HTML
I love the simplicity of HTML. Take a web site from 1999 and it will still render in a modern web browser. Sure, it will look antiquated, but it will work. HTML is the backbone of the web and it is making a comeback as a language.

Blitz 3 – Embracing the JAMstack
Blitz 3 brings innovations and features that empower you to be the Jedi developer that you are. Deploy bat-out-of-hell-fast sites using Twig and your favourite Craft plugins, serving them from edge CDNs with continuous deployment, version control and one-click rollbacks.

Deploying a Craft site to Netlify with Blitz 3
Using the Git Deployer that comes with Blitz 3, you can now set up Craft CMS to automatically deploy to Netlify Edge (the super-charged CDN). The entire process takes around 20 minutes, excluding DNS propagation time.

Blitz 3 is Here: “Hello, JAMstack”
Blitz 3 is here (in public beta) and allows you to bring your Jedi Twig templating skills to the JAMstack!!

Takeaways from Dot All in Montréal
Dot All 2019 recently wrapped up and it did not disappoint!! Dubbed “the JAMstack conference” by attendees, there were some big announcements like Craft CMS 4 and Craft Cloud. All in all though, this conference was about the people, their stories and the community.

How The Web Moves On, And Doesn't
Today we are overjoyed to launch a new major redesign. Huge thanks to Seamus Holman, Sarah Waring and Jana Grabner for helping to make this a reality!!
8 years ago today we revealed our first major redesign to the PutYourLightsOn brand. To my surprise, while taking a trip down memory lane, I realised that even though the web has really moved on since then, design really hasn’t that much.

A Technical Rundown of How Project Config Works
As of Craft 3.1.0, “Project Config” is a thing. Here’s a technical rundown of how it works.

Understanding Project Config in Craft CMS
Craft CMS 3.1 introduces some big features, most noticably Project Config. Project Config is a configuration setting which, when enabled, turns a .yaml
file into the single source of truth for a site’s schema.

Static File Caching with Craft CMS 3, aka The Best Of Both Worlds
In a recent redesign of the PutYourLightsOn website, we decided to start with a blank slate. It became an excellent opportunity to re-evaluate the state of web publishing tools in 2018 with the aim of utilising the best possible means to build a lightning-fast site that would still enable a great authoring experience.
The Mystery of Presenting at Tech Conferences Revealed
This article was written after the DotAll Conference 2018. The developer community I refer to is the incredibly supportive Craft CMS community.
From The Archives #

Upcoming ExpressionEngine Conference
In just a few days I will find myself amongst my peers at the biggest ExpressionEngine event of the year, and I couldn’t be more excited about it. A lot has happened in the CMS world over the past year and I feel that the conference is a great way to come to terms with some of these changes and to “check in” with the community and with the team behind EE.

Craft Plugins Launched
Today marks the beginning of an exciting time for us. We have just taken 2 of our Craft CMS plugins, Snaptcha and Sitemap, out of private beta, and the 1.0.0 releases are now available.

Add-on Support Visualised
Lately I’ve become more aware of a pattern that seems to be quite common among software within the ExpressionEngine community, and it not only appears within third-party add-ons but stems all the way from the core product itself.

Multi Language Module Now Free For Everyone
The Multi Language Module has been free for non-profit organisations since it’s release nearly 4 years ago, but as of today we are making it a free add-on for personal and commercial use as well.

Sponsoring ExpressionEngine Conference 2013
PutYourLightsOn is proud to be an official sponsor of the ExpressionEngine Conference 2013!! The conference will take place on the 14th and 15th of October in Portland, Oregon, and has a great line up of speakers.

Why I’m So Excited About Craft (and why you should be)
In the past couple of weeks I’ve spent more and more time playing with Craft, the new CMS by Pixel & Tonic. When I say playing with, I mean working with, but since it is proving to be such a joy to use, I feel that “playing” is a more appropriate word.

EEUK & Open API Revealed
I had the pleasure of revealing Open API, my latest creation for ExpressionEngine, in my presentation at EEUK 2013. Open API is a front-end, http-based API for ExpressionEngine that provides authentication and CRUD (create/read/update/delete) functionality to content and data in the CMS.

All Add-on Income Donated On 13.12.11
To celebrate the large success of Expresso and our other add-ons this year, all income from sales of all PutYourLightsOn add-ons today (13.12.11) will be donated to charity (supporting education programs in West Africa).

End of Year Round-up
2012 seems to have flown by rather quickly but it has been an action-packed year. We released three add-ons this year, two of which have been nominated for the devot-ee AcademEE Awards. We attended EECI Europe and I had the honour of speaking at EECI U.S.

EECI US 2012
I was lucky enough to go to both EECI’s this year, the European one in Leiden and the US one near Austin which happened last week. In fact I was invited to speak at the US one and felt very honoured to present to my fellow EE community members. I gave a talk on the developer’s track and it was a full house, standing room only!!

Visualising Devot-ee Sales
If like me you sell your ExpressionEngine add-ons on devot-ee then you are definitely familiar with the sales reports page. It gives a quick overview and tabular report of the selected month’s sales. But if you want to properly analyse your sales then you simply need to visualise them. I’ve written a small php script to do just that and frankly I’ve surprised myself with how insightful it is.

Responsive CP Finally Released
Responsive CP is an ExpressionEngine theme that I started working on over a year ago but that I only released to the public as a free add-on last week. You may have already noticed it in the various screenshots of our add-ons. The theme has two main goals – to provide a more professional looking control panel and to work well on desktop as well as mobile devices with small to medium screen sizes.

Highlights of EECI 2011
Wow what a week! EECI in Brooklyn was a huge success and the ExpressionEngine event of the year. Great speakers, great people, great organisation and an amazing venue! Below are some of my personal highlights.

Another Year, Another Redesign
Another year has past and since the summer a redesign of PutYourLightsOn has been in the works. Today I am proud to finally make it live!