No-code websites and Theme Vitals updates

Support this newsletter and my community work on Github Sponsors, Ko-fi, or Patreon.

New post: No-code website builders compared: From landing pages to ecommerce #

Yes, I am a web developer and I love building websites. I also strongly believe that everyone should have a personal website where they can establish who they are and their personal brand. However, not everyone has those skills. Or maybe they have the skills but not the time. So, I evaluated several no-code website builders to come up with options for that crowd. Check it out.

New Theme Vitals features #

Each month I try to add a few more features to Theme Vitals, the website I built that reports web performance by Shopify theme. Here are a few of the latest new things:

• The Fastest Shopify Themes in 2025 - a page that reports out the top themes - built for ease of consumption for users but also for SEO
• New badges marking free themes
• New badges indicating top performers
• Report-card letter-grades for performance to help less technical people understand the context behind the scores for "percent passing Core Web Vitals"
• Tighter UI for the individual theme pages so you can see important charts closer to the top of the page

From other folks on the web #

A few things by other folks I enjoyed consuming since last time:

• WebPageTest has been a little less useful lately, but folks seem to like the free website speed tool by DebugBear
• 🚨 New tool: Impolighthouse (direct link) by Jono Alderson (funny)
• I'm not a robot by Neal (funny)

/Offline #

It's been kind of a meh month when it comes to reading. I only had 2 4-star reads, both fiction:

• A Witch's Guide to Magical Innkeeping by Sangu Mandanna
• Cinder Book One of the Lunar Chronicles (I also liked book 2, Scarlet) by Marissa Meyer
• Gardening: The winter veggie garden is in the ground, and bok choy is currently ready to harvest. It's also the perfect time for planting perennials, and I've several native plants I started that are going in new meadow beds. I was super excited to find a monarch pupa and was able to catch a picture of it after emerged before flying off.
• Art: I have 3 paintings in the Durham Arts Council Our House exhibition as well as one in the Paint It Orange exhibition for their plein air paint out. I've also added some more works to my art website.

This newsletter is reader-supported. If you buy a book from one of the links above, I'll earn some coffee money. You don't pay a higher price, and Bookshop.org supports independent booksellers.