Bits & Brews

Stories about PHP, WordPress, web development, debugging, security, and lessons learned from real projects.

Posts

• OPcache, explained for people who have never turned it on - What OPcache keeps in memory, the five settings that matter, why validate_timestamps changes your deploy, and how to check the hit rate.
• Minecraft in Elden Ring: how AI agents are merging games together - Minecraft in Elden Ring, skateboarding in Call of Duty, Mario Kart in Zombies. Inside the passthrough trick that AI agents now put together in hours.
• Seven Adobe apps, rebuilt by AI: the file formats are the real story - Seven Adobe applications, rebuilt in Rust by AI agents and released for free. The lasting question is what they say about file formats.
• Symfony 8: what changed, and should you upgrade? - Symfony 8 requires PHP 8.4, moves configuration to PHP array shapes and enforces return types. What that means if you are running 6.x or 7.4 today.
• Composer without the myths: keeping PHP dependencies sane - Lock files, update versus install, version constraints, and the audit command nobody runs. A practical routine for keeping dependencies boring.
• WordPress security basics that actually matter - Six security basics that stop most attacks: updates, strong passwords, login limits, removing unused plugins, backups, and HTTPS.
• Debugging in production without panic: a calm checklist - A fixed order of operations for when something breaks in production and everyone is looking at you. It starts with reading the error rather than changing code.
• Speed up a slow WordPress site in 5 steps - Most slow WordPress sites are slow for the same few reasons. Measure, fix images, cache, cut plugins, and use a CDN.
• WordPress 7.0: the wp2shell bug that got every hosting company emailing you - When a bug in WordPress core forces every hosting company on the internet to email their customers, it is worth understanding. What wp2shell did, why it worked, and the small routines that decide whether your site survives the next one.
• PHP 8.5 in practice: the features you will actually use - The pipe operator, clone with new values, array_first and array_last, and a fatal error backtrace. What is worth adopting from PHP 8.5, and what can wait.
• PHP tips that save me time every week - Seven small PHP habits that prevent bugs and make code easier to maintain: strict types, typed signatures, and more.
• Jev returns decisions instead of sentences - TypeSafe's Jev skips text generation and returns typed decisions with confidence scores. What it changes for developers, and what the benchmarks do not prove.
• Elementor is great, but it can be slow: how to keep it fast - Elementor does not have to slow your site down. Five practical fixes: hosting, caching, widgets, images, and unused code.
• Symfony, plain PHP, or WordPress: how to pick - A practical way to choose between Symfony, plain PHP, and WordPress/WooCommerce, based on what you are actually building.
• Run Ollama locally: a no-nonsense setup guide - Install Ollama, pull a model, and start chatting with a local LLM in about ten minutes, with no cloud service, no API keys and no monthly bill.
• WordPress White Screen of Death: what to do when your site goes blank - Your WordPress site is a blank white page. This is how to find the cause, from memory limits to plugin and theme conflicts, in the right order.
• Welcome to Bits & Brews - A quick introduction to the new blog: what to expect, why I am writing it, and who it is for.

Tags: PHP · WordPress · Web Development · Debugging · Performance · Security · DevOps · Ollama · LLM · Local AI · Setup · Symfony · WooCommerce

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