Web Design
An Introduction to JavaScript Expressions
A thorough but approachable lesson on JavaScript expressions excerpted JavaScript For Everyone, a complete online course offered by our friends at Piccalilli. An Introduction to JavaScript Expressions originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part of the DigitalOcean family. You...
How to Choose a Web Design Company You’ll Love Wor...
Hiring a web design company can feel like a gamble. Some charge $500, others $5,000, and the results can vary just as much. This guide walks you through how to tell who’s actually worth it.
Ambient Animations In Web Design: Practical Applic...
Motion can be tricky: too much distracts, too little feels flat. Ambient animations sit in the middle. They’re subtle, slow-moving details that add atmosphere without stealing the show. In part two of his series, web design pioneer Andy Clarke...
How to Become a WordPress Developer: A Zero-to-Hir...
Want to build for the platform that powers nearly half the web? This guide shows how to start from scratch and become a successful WordPress developer.
Building a Honeypot Field That Works
Honeypots are fields that developers use to prevent spam submissions. They still work in 2025. But you got to set a couple of tricks in place so spambots can’t detect your honeypot field. Building a Honeypot Field That Works...
How Net Literacy Secures Its Legacy With WordPress...
Net Literacy, a nonprofit promoting digital inclusion, adopts WordPress.com’s 100-Year Plan, ensuring long-term access to resources for future generations amidst funding cycles and changes.
AI In UX: Achieve More With Less
A simple but powerful mental model for working with AI: treat it like an enthusiastic intern with no real-world experience. Paul Boag shares lessons learned from real client projects across user research, design, development, and content creation.
3 New Features in the Jetpack Mobile App
We’ve been cooking a few major updates for the Jetpack app ahead of the iOS 26 launch, and with the latest 26.4, we are pushing the latest batch with a new feature designed to save you time and eliminate...
How To Make Your UX Research Hard To Ignore
Research isn’t everything. Facts alone don’t win arguments, but powerful stories do. Here’s how to turn your research into narratives that inspire trust and influence decisions.
Sequential linear() Animation With N Elements
Let’s suppose you have N elements with the same animation that should animate sequentially. Modern CSS makes this easy and it works for any number of items! Sequential linear() Animation With N Elements originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is...
Masonry: Watching a CSS Feature Evolve
Looking at the CSS Masonry discussions and what they can teach us about the development of new CSS features. What is the CSSWG’s role? What influence do browsers have? What can learn from the way past features evolved? Masonry:...
The Grayscale Problem
From A/B tests to AI slop, the modern web is bleeding out its colour. Standardized, templated, and overoptimized, it’s starting to feel like a digital Levittown. But it doesn’t have to be.
We Completely Missed width/height: stretch
The TL;DR is that stretch does the same thing as declaring 100%, but ignores padding when looking at the available space. We Completely Missed width/height: stretch originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part of the DigitalOcean family. You should...
A beginner-friendly guide to view transitions in C...
Learn how to bring smooth, animated navigation to multi-page apps with view transitions. With just one line of CSS, you can enable seamless transitions between pages.
The thing about contrast-color
One of our favorites, Andy Clarke, on the one thing keeping the CSS contrast-color() function from true glory: For my website design, I chose a dark blue background colour (#212E45) and light text (#d3d5da). This … The thing about...
Introducing Blueprints in WordPress Studio 1.6.0
WordPress Studio 1.6.0 adds Blueprint support to create sites from repeatable recipes. Use featured Blueprints or your own to install plugins, activate themes, and get straight to work.
See Your Site Through AI: WordPress.com Now Suppor...
MCP lets AI assistants like Claude and Cursor generate real-time insights from your WordPress.com site data.
Getting Creative With shape-outside
There are so many creative opportunities for using shape-outside that I’m surprised I see it used so rarely. So, how can you use it to add personality to a design? Here’s how I do it. Getting Creative With shape-outside...
Smashing Animations Part 5: Building Adaptive SVGs...
SVGs, they scale, yes, but how else can you make them adapt even better to several screen sizes? Web design pioneer Andy Clarke explains how he builds what he calls “adaptive SVGs” using ``, ``, and CSS Media Queries.
Intent Prototyping: A Practical Guide To Building ...
Ready to move beyond static mockups? Here is a practical, step-by-step guide to Intent Prototyping — a disciplined method that uses AI to turn your design intent (UI sketches, conceptual models, and user flows) directly into a live prototype,...