Blog

Seed Optimizely CMS 12 and 13 with pages, blocks, media and Visual Builder sections from a fluent C# definition, with optional AI-written content.

What a 4th Dan grading in Japanese Jiu-Jitsu involves, how I prepared, and why I'm looking forward to the sai more than the nunchaku.

Feature flag Optimizely CMS content properties without code changes: visibility, validation, editors and whole content types, with any flag provider.

A code-first guide for .NET developers moving from Optimizely CMS 12 to 13: Visual Builder, ExperienceData, Sections, Elements and tag helpers.

Four patterns Opal users may be getting wrong: inference levels, oversized tool responses, missing output constraints and no response caching.

MicroMediator vs MediatR: real benchmark data across dispatch, memory, throughput, and cold start to help you choose the right tool for your workload.

Streaming is not always faster. Learn when IAsyncEnumerable saves memory, when it costs you, and what early exit looks like at 1,000,000 items.

AI systems are now often the first contact between your content and its audience. Why a CMS built purely for SEO isn't ready for GEO and AEO.

MicroMediator makes handler lifetime explicit. Learn when to use Singleton, Scoped, or Transient and what the real performance difference looks like.

Why MicroMediator exists, how it compares with other mediator libraries and how it fits into .NET projects, including Optimizely CMS builds.

Optimizely's 2025 shift to a unified execution loop, and how agentic Opal AI and integrated data drive learning velocity for developers and marketers.

Two Opal Hackathon projects, ClarityFlow and Opal Events, that extend Opal with the Optimizely.Opal.Tools SDK to bridge the gap between data and action.

A free Chrome extension that opens the live view of the Optimizely CMS page you're editing in one click. No right click, no new tab, no faff.

A practical look at Optimizely Opal's Instructions feature, from built-in agents to custom instruction workflows, for teams scaling AI content.

Working with Optimizely SaaS, GraphQL fragments and headless front ends, with practical fixes using .NET BFF APIs, GraphQL.NET and modular content.

How Optimizely's AI Agents use agentic AI to run complex tasks on their own, and what that means for digital workflows and technical leaders.

Personalise Optimizely CMS content with Cloudflare's geolocation headers, using my Cloudflare Geo-location Criteria package for visitor groups.

An unofficial Chrome extension that adds a DAM asset picker to Optimizely SaaS CMS, so editors can select and insert assets without leaving the editor.

Optimizely's CMS roadmap for developers: faster SaaS, Visual Builder updates, better developer tooling and Graph-first architecture in CMS 13.

Andy Blyth joins the Optimizely MVP programme, recognised for his contributions to the Optimizely community. What it means and what comes next.

Optimizely's SaaS CMS is here: automatic updates, lower costs, enterprise-grade security and more flexibility for developers and editors alike.

When Optimizely PaaS beats SaaS: BFF layers, custom APIs and fewer vendors. And when SaaS fits better. Choose on your needs, not the hype.

Why C# developers should learn Node.js, especially with Optimizely's SaaS CMS on the horizon, and the new opportunities it can open up for you.

Moving from DEPT® to a new role as Technical Architect at 26, after an 8-year journey of growth, and looking ahead to the next set of challenges.

How the 7-second rule improves group discussions and brainstorming in digital agencies, giving everyone room to think and to be heard.

The Iron Triangle of scope, time and cost, and how developers can work within project constraints when every change affects the others.

The Four Ds of time management (Do, Delegate, Defer, Delete) for developers at every level in a digital agency, from junior coders to architects.

A step-by-step guide to setting up Optimizely CMS on .NET Aspire, with a walkthrough of my Optimizely Aspire repository on GitHub.

Why I'm teaching my son Python to fill the gaps in school computer science: programming basics, problem-solving skills and a growth mindset.

My tips on how developers can be the best they can be: continuous improvement, learning new skills and understanding the infrastructure underneath.

Reflections on passing my Sandan (3rd Dan) grading in Japanese Jiu-Jitsu, and the long, challenging journey it took to reach that milestone.

How martial arts training can make you a better software developer: fitness, focus, mental toughness, stress relief and a healthier work-life balance.

Why every web developer should have k6 installed: the benefits of local load testing, and how k6 also works for regression and integration tests.

Optimizely 12 runs on .NET 5, so it runs on a Mac too. A step-by-step guide to getting it up and running, handy for front-end developers.

The Technical Architect is one of the most fluid roles in a digital agency. Every architect has different skills and every project different needs.

Finally default values have been added as an option in Content Models in the Contentful CMS

A new site for Wife of a Geek, rebuilt on Contentful and Azure Cognitive Search after a frustrating, flaky first version on WordPress.

Contentful rich text has no link target option, so here's how to open external links in a new tab in Contentful.net using an IContentRenderer.

After sitting the exam, I thought I would document some of the ways I prepared for the exam, and what I found most useful out of the material.

This week I passed my Optimizely (formerly Episerver) Content Cloud certification.

Contentful's built-in search is limited and awkward in .NET, so I used Contentful webhooks to index content into Azure Cognitive Search instead.

Promoted to Technical Architect at DEPT® UK in the same week I became a Contentful Certified Professional. Next up, the Optimizely certification.

Contentful have recently introduced tagging, I think this is a really important step forward for the headless CMS.

Can emoji's be used in URLs, page titles and meta data? 🤔😂😂

My approach to dynamic CMS content using Mediatr (and Automapper)

Using an Episerver InitializableModule with Bogus and Waffle to generate realistic test pages for QA and UAT teams during sign-off.

A categorised list of nuget packages that I tend to use in most projects. Covers data access, business logic, and presentation packages.

My first thoughts on Episerver after five years on SDL Tridion and Contentful, including its code-first approach and the InitializableModule.

There are two basic types of programming languages, object-oriented and functional, what happens with these worlds collide?

A nice script I put together to do load testing based on the contents of a sitemap.

My solution to the writing SDL Web Topology Powershell scripts