Technology

Three stories in the news lately have got me thinking about how big tech companies interact with one another and with us. The first was the jury verdict for Epic in Epic Games v. Google, a landmark antitrust lawsuit. Second, the messaging app Beeper attempted to make Apple’s iMessage application available on other platforms. Third, Google began cracking down on users customizing Android devices.

Adding a list of related posts to web pages is a great way to help users find new content and keep visitors engaged on your website. I was recently adding this feature to a website built on WordPress. There are several WordPress plugins that implement related posts functionality, but I wanted precise control over the function and styling of the related posts. I also didn’t want the overhead and hassle of installing a new plugin, so I implemented the related posts feature myself.

In my various posts about developing static websites, I’ve pointed out that some critical functions can be tricky to implement. One example is pagination—splitting a long list of posts across several numbered pages. This is a nerdy deep-dive into how pagination works for two popular static site frameworks: Gatsby and Hugo.

Not that long ago, most people would laugh if you told them you did any serious software or web development on Windows. All the serious coders used Macs, except for the handful who ran Linux. I was in the latter camp; as someone who’s never liked Apple products, I installed Debian on a clunky Compaq laptop in 2003 and was immediately hooked by the idea of running an open source operating system. I don’t really run Linux much any more, though, because in the past few years, Windows has become a functional, even good, development platform.