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Brain Dumps

Real lessons from building real projects. No fluff, no theory – just honest insights from the trenches of development, complete with spectacular failures and hard-won victories.

Topics:accessibilityagency-alternativeai-automationai-citationai-designai-design-slopai-generated-contentai-opsai-searchai-slopautomationbrain-dumpbuild-vs-buybusiness-automationcanonicalcanonical-urlscase-studydead-internetdebuggingdesign-reviewdesign-systemsdiagnosticengineering-decisionsfreelancegenerative-aigeogoogle-search-consolegscindexinginternal-linksisrllms-txtmeta-tagsmonitoringnext-jsnextjsog-imageopen-graphpersonalpositioningpythonrenderingrobotsschemaseoseo-automationseo-toolssitemapsocial-sharingssgssrtailwindtechnical-seouxweb-design
How Much of the Web Is AI-Generated? What the Data Actually Says
Latest
June 18, 2026
5 min read

How Much of the Web Is AI-Generated? What the Data Actually Says

By mid-2025, ~35% of new websites were AI-generated. But the data on whether everything 'looks the same' is more surprising than the meme. Here's what's real and what isn't.
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og:image Size Guide: The 1200x630 Rule and the Safe Zone Nobody Mentions
June 18, 2026
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og:image Size Guide: The 1200x630 Rule and the Safe Zone Nobody Mentions

1200x630 px, 1.91:1 ratio — that's the baseline. But the safe zone, the file-size ceiling, and the width/height attributes crawlers need are what most guides skip. Here's all of it.
Why Your Link Preview Isn't Showing (and How to Fix It)
June 16, 2026
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Why Your Link Preview Isn't Showing (and How to Fix It)

You updated your og:image, you reshared the link, and it still shows the old card. Here's what's actually happening — and the exact steps to fix it.
How to Tell If a Website Was AI-Generated: A Field Guide
June 15, 2026
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How to Tell If a Website Was AI-Generated: A Field Guide

A practical checklist for spotting AI-generated websites — the visual tells, the dead giveaways in the code, and how to confirm it by measuring the page instead of guessing.
Open Graph Tags Explained: og:title, og:description, og:image, og:type
June 11, 2026
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Open Graph Tags Explained: og:title, og:description, og:image, og:type

Open Graph tags are the four lines in your that control how your link looks when someone shares it. Here's what each one does, the mistakes that break previews, and the minimum block every page needs.
Why Every AI-Built Website Is Purple (and Looks the Same)
June 11, 2026
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Why Every AI-Built Website Is Purple (and Looks the Same)

AI-built sites are purple because of one default color in Tailwind UI that saturated AI training data — then fed back on itself. Here's the full chain, and how to break it.
What Is AI Design Slop? (And Why Every AI-Built Site Looks the Same)
June 9, 2026
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What Is AI Design Slop? (And Why Every AI-Built Site Looks the Same)

What AI design slop is, why AI tools keep defaulting to the same purple-gradient, glass-card, low-contrast UI, what the data actually says about web homogenization, and how to catch it before it ships.
Automating internal link audits with 50 lines of Python and Claude
June 9, 2026
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Automating internal link audits with 50 lines of Python and Claude

The internal link audit is one of the most valuable SEO tasks nobody does — because doing it by hand on a 100-page site takes a day. Here's the 50-line Python script + Claude prompt combo that runs it in 4 minutes.
Meta Tags for SEO and Social Sharing: The Complete Guide
June 9, 2026
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Meta Tags for SEO and Social Sharing: The Complete Guide

Most meta-tag advice is either a decade out of date or a copy-paste list with no opinions. Here's what actually moves rankings and link previews in 2026 — and what to stop wasting time on.
Building a weekly SEO monitoring stack with AI (canonical, schema, sitemap, CWV)
June 4, 2026
ai-automationautomationtechnical-seomonitoringseo-automation

Building a weekly SEO monitoring stack with AI (canonical, schema, sitemap, CWV)

You don't need Semrush, Ahrefs, and ContentKing combined. Here's the four-piece monitoring stack that catches the SEO bugs that matter — costs about €0 to run, alerts when something drifts, takes 15 minutes a week to review.
How I rebuilt Booplex's indexing in 5 weeks after the localhost disaster
June 1, 2026
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How I rebuilt Booplex's indexing in 5 weeks after the localhost disaster

A canonical URL bug pointed half my pages at localhost:3000 in production for 11 days before I caught it. Then a 5-week recovery to get back to fully indexed. The timeline, the fixes, the GSC charts, and the lessons.
llms.txt: what it is, how to write one, and why most SEOs are still ignoring it
May 28, 2026
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llms.txt: what it is, how to write one, and why most SEOs are still ignoring it

llms.txt is the AI-era robots.txt — a markdown file at your site root that tells LLMs what to read and what to skip. Here's what it actually does, how to write a real one, and the parts of the spec everyone gets wrong.
Why I don't sell services pages (and what I do instead)
May 26, 2026
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Why I don't sell services pages (and what I do instead)

Every freelancer playbook says "build a services page with three packages and a Calendly link." I don't. Not because I'm lazy. Because the playbook doesn't fit how I actually work or how people actually find good collaborators.
I built an admin panel from scratch in 2026 and I'd do it again
May 25, 2026
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I built an admin panel from scratch in 2026 and I'd do it again

Every "don't roll your own admin panel" article is right in general and wrong for me. Here's why I built Booplex's admin from scratch — what it cost, what it gave me, and the parts where commercial CMS would have actually saved time.
The GSC Coverage report is the most underrated free tool in SEO
May 22, 2026
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The GSC Coverage report is the most underrated free tool in SEO

Everyone uses Search Console for queries and clicks. Almost nobody actually reads the Coverage report properly. It's the single best diagnostic in SEO and it's free. Here's what's in it, how to read it, and the bug patterns it catches.
ISR, SSG, SSR — which one actually helps SEO in 2026?
May 21, 2026
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ISR, SSG, SSR — which one actually helps SEO in 2026?

Three rendering strategies. Different trade-offs. Different SEO implications. Here's the honest breakdown for Next.js sites in 2026 — what Googlebot sees, what Core Web Vitals look like, and which to pick for which page type.
The 5 technical SEO leaks that quietly kill indexing (and how to plug each one)
May 20, 2026
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The 5 technical SEO leaks that quietly kill indexing (and how to plug each one)

Most indexing disasters aren't dramatic. They're slow leaks — five common technical SEO bugs that bleed indexed pages over weeks. Here's each one, why it's so easy to miss, and the 10-minute fix.
Why GSC URL Inspection lies about your canonical URL (and how to actually check)
May 12, 2026
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Why GSC URL Inspection lies about your canonical URL (and how to actually check)

Google Search Console URL Inspection shows two canonicals. Most people only notice one. That gap is where indexing problems hide.
Never Done Learning, Forever Tinkering
May 6, 2026
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Never Done Learning, Forever Tinkering

A casual update on what's actually filling my days when the Brain Dumps go quiet. AI automation, business workflows, tools I'm building, and the things I can't stop poking at.
How I Fixed Canonical URLs Pointing to Localhost in Next.js
April 5, 2026
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How I Fixed Canonical URLs Pointing to Localhost in Next.js

My portfolio site had zero indexed pages for 5 weeks. Every canonical URL pointed to localhost:3000. Here's the 13-file grep audit, the 18-line fix, and how to check your own site.

Got Questions or War Stories?

I love hearing about other people's spectacular failures and unexpected wins. Drop me a line if you've got a story to share or a question about any of these posts.