I’ve enjoyed blogging about my progress as a developer this year so this is my end of year round up of the highlights of 2023. In this post…

Building the Solidarity Knows No Borders website ✊ Using AlpineJs to add interactivity to a web page ⛰️ Finishing my new personal website…

At Common Knowledge we work with organisers and grassroots groups to improve their websites and digital infrastructure to maximise the…

Developing my new personal website with Eleventy.js 🤖 Preparing for Platform.org site launch 🏗️ Optimizing my WordPress workflow…

Over the last couple of months I’ve been rebuilding my personal website with Eleventy. This post is an update on that work. Why move from…

Notes from July Security scanning; block based themes and building Gutenberg blocks in WordPress 🧱 Launching the Architecture Lobby website…

Notes from June Google Analytics migration to GA4 🔍Design QA for SWARM website 💅 Diving into WordPress Full Site Editor for developers…

Notes from May The launch of the 2023 The World Transformed festival 🚀 Successful Bedrock deployment with 350org 🌎 Adapting an existing…

Notes from April Receiving my apprenticeship result 👩‍🎓 Building a new website for campaign group Swarm 🐝 Adding new features to The…

For the final part of my Software Development Apprenticeship I’ve been working on a new website for Common Knowledge. Common Knowledge makes…

Notes from February Wrapping up the Common Knowledge website project 🎁 Working on building a CI/CD pipeline with WordPress and Bedock…

Notes from January 🚧 Building the new Common Knowledge website. ✍️ Writing a project report for my apprenticeship. 📝 Writing technical…

Since I’ve been writing monthly round ups recently I thought it made sense to review 2022 in December. This time last year I had just…

Notes from November 🌍 Working on FutureNatures, StopWatch and Humanitarian OpenStreetMap for Common Knowledge. ✏️ Redesigning my personal…

Notes from October In this post I’m experimenting with a different format for my blog. Month notes are a format where I can share what I’ve…

Tips for reading code (for new developers) One of the most important transitions new developers need to make is from working on their own…

This blog was originally posted on the Common Knowledge website I’m Anna and I’m a software engineering apprentice at Common Knowledge. I…

CSS is a very powerful and flexible language but it needs to be organised. Adding rules to the end of a single file will quickly become…

What is a CMS? A CMS or content management system is an application that helps users create, manage and modify content on a website. Most…

Advice for learning how to code When I was working in publishing I started learning to code by studying for 20 minutes each day. After about…

What is the WordPress Gutenberg editor? WordPress is the most popular CMS in the world and the Gutenberg editor is its most significant…

5 Things I've Learnt as an Apprentice Software Developer I’ve been working as an apprentice software developer for a couple of months now…

How I made my blog When I decided to start blogging I knew that I wanted to build the site myself. I chose to use the Gatsby framework as I…

This blog is a follow up to My Journey to Becoming a Developer. In that post I described how I’d come to apply to the Founders and Coders…

It’s been a month since I started the full time course at Founders & Coders and it seems like a good time to talk about what I’ve been…

Co-Tech (Co-operative Technologists) is a network of co-operatives that sell digital or tech services. They met for their conference on 2…

I’ve worked in book publishing for eight years but I’ve loved it. I’ve won awards (which is really nice and slightly embarrassing) and I’ve…

Why you should make a personal website A personal website can be thought of as like your ‘home’ on the internet. It is a way to make…

Let’s face it...the publishing job market in 2020 was tough. While much of that can be attributed to the pandemic it’s clear that the COVID…

High quality Amazon product pages can improve your ranking in the search algorithm and help you sell more books. During the COVID-1…

1000 True Fans is a business model based on an essay initially published by Kevin Kelly in 2008. In his post Kelly proposes that to be…

We know that good metadata contributes greatly to a book’s success. But like anything else in publishing, metadata is constantly changing…

TikTok has taken the world by storm in the last two years sending songs to the top of the charts and even sabotaging a Donald Trump rally…

In 2010 at the Mobile World Congress Google CEO Eric Schmidt announced that moving forward, web designers should put mobile-first. What is…

Publishers typically underuse their websites with the option to browse books and not much else. Some, often smaller presses, do sell print…

As schools, colleges and universities closed during the first UK lockdown teachers and students had to adapt to new ways of learning online…

What are Keywords? Keywords are words and phrases that can be added to a book’s metadata to improve its searchability on Amazon. They are…

We’re all going to be stuck indoors for a while this winter and in need of new ways to pass the time. The appetite for learning to code in…

Metadata is a term we hear a lot about but what exactly is it? And if you work in publishing - or hope to be soon - what do you need to know…