studioromeo · studioromeo · Oct 4, 2025 · Oct 4, 2025
diff --git a/eleventy.config.js b/eleventy.config.js
@@ -5,6 +5,11 @@ import { eleventyImageTransformPlugin } from "@11ty/eleventy-img";
 import site from "./src/_data/site.js";
 
 export default async function (eleventyConfig) {
+    eleventyConfig.setFrontMatterParsingOptions({
+        excerpt: true,
+        excerpt_separator: "---",
+    });
+
     eleventyConfig.addTemplateFormats("xml");
 
     eleventyConfig.addExtension("xml", {

diff --git a/src/_includes/default.html b/src/_includes/default.html
@@ -1,12 +1,10 @@
 <!DOCTYPE html>
-<html lang="en">
+<html lang="en-GB">
     <head>
         <meta charset="utf-8" />
         <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width" />
 
-        <meta name="author" content="{{ site.title }}" />
-        <meta name="description" content="{{ site.description}}" />
-        <meta name="theme-color" content="#359567" />
+        {% include 'meta.html' %}
 
         <link rel="preconnect" href="https://fonts.gstatic.com" crossorigin />
         <link

diff --git a/src/_includes/meta.html b/src/_includes/meta.html
@@ -0,0 +1,31 @@
+<meta name="author" content="{{ site.title }}" />
+{%- if summary -%}
+<meta name="description" content="{{ summary }}" />
+{% else %}
+<meta name="description" content="{{ site.description }}" />
+{% endif %}
+<meta name="theme-color" content="#359567" />
+
+<meta property="og:site_name" content="{{ site.title }}" />
+{% if title %}
+<meta property="og:title" content="{{ title }}" />
+{% else %}
+<meta property="og:title" content="{{ site.title }}" />
+{%endif %} {%- if summary -%}
+<meta name="og:description" content="{{ summary }}" />
+{% else %}
+<meta name="og:description" content="{{ site.description }}" />
+{% endif %}
+<meta property="og:url" content="{{ site.url }}{{ page.url }}" />
+{% if tags contains "post" %}
+<meta property="og:type" content="article" />
+{% else %}
+<meta property="og:type" content="website" />
+{% endif %} <meta property="og:locale" content="{{ "en_GB" }}" />{% if tags
+contains "post" %}
+<meta
+    property="article:published_time"
+    content="{{ page.date|date_to_xmlschema  }}"
+/>
+{%- endif -%}
+<link rel="canonical" href="{{ site.url }}{{ page.url }}" />
diff --git a/src/posts/2012-09-08-initial-commit.md b/src/posts/2012-09-08-initial-commit.md
@@ -1,40 +1,44 @@
 So finally, after many years of world class procrastination I finally have my first site
 
+---
+
 And what a beauty she is! From start to finish this site has taken me about 2 days to complete _(and many more tinkering)_. To say I'm pleased is an understatement, not only because it has taken me so long to get this far but also because I did it under my own steam.
 
 I'd like to send out a special thanks to [David Darnes], for helping me not only with my snazzy logo but also solving a few of the irritating bugs webkit and friends threw my way.
 
 ### So who am I?
+
 I'm Rob, a developer from Great Britain. I started coding in 2007 while at school with ASP.NET, a lot of people dislike .net and personally I don't blame them. But looking back there was a lot of good stuff in the .net framework if you knew what you were doing from the outset... I clearly didn't!
 
 So one thing lead to another and I made the switch to PHP. Moving over was a breath of fresh air from the often complicated world of xml config files and code behind files. Initially I started using Kohana after being recommended by [Richard Standbrook], but I also dabbled in WordPress after discovering its ability to get a basic site up in minutes.
 
 It wasn't until working on the famed Jigoshop plugin that I discovered all the new things that WordPress could do such as custom post types, routing to name just a few. I also had good fun learning about working on a distributed product to boot!
 
 ### What's occurring
-Like many in my world I decided I should start writing some of my *eureka* moments down so:
+
+Like many in my world I decided I should start writing some of my _eureka_ moments down so:
 
 1. I now have a reference to check incase I've forgotten how to do something.
 2. Hopefully I can save someone else who's in the same boat some bother.
 3. Finally, so I can share some my ideas with the rest of the world.
 
 ### Credit where due
 
-* [Peter Rhoades] - for helping with the logo and setting up the site.
-* [Matt Kersley] - for providing some much needed illustrator help.
-* [Laura Kalbag], [Jack Franklin] and [Rachel Shillcock] - for motivating me to finally get around to creating this blog.
-* [Chris Coyier] - for providing the fantastic tutorials on [CSS-Tricks].
-* [Github] - for providing a platform for me to use and just generally being awesome!
+-   [Peter Rhoades] - for helping with the logo and setting up the site.
+-   [Matt Kersley] - for providing some much needed illustrator help.
+-   [Laura Kalbag], [Jack Franklin] and [Rachel Shillcock] - for motivating me to finally get around to creating this blog.
+-   [Chris Coyier] - for providing the fantastic tutorials on [CSS-Tricks].
+-   [Github] - for providing a platform for me to use and just generally being awesome!
 
 It's going to be a fun ride and I hope you enjoy reading my posts as much as I enjoyed creating them :)
 
-[David Darnes]:   https://twitter.com/daviddarnes
+[David Darnes]: https://twitter.com/daviddarnes
 [Richard Standbrook]: https://twitter.com/richstandbrook
-[Peter Rhoades]:    https://twitter.com/createdbypete
-[Matt Kersley]:    https://twitter.com/kersley
-[Laura Kalbag]:   https://twitter.com/laurakalbag
-[Jack Franklin]:    https://twitter.com/Jack_Franklin
-[Rachel Shillcock]:  https://twitter.com/missrachilli
-[Chris Coyier]:   https://twitter.com/chriscoyier
-[Github]:  https://github.com
+[Peter Rhoades]: https://twitter.com/createdbypete
+[Matt Kersley]: https://twitter.com/kersley
+[Laura Kalbag]: https://twitter.com/laurakalbag
+[Jack Franklin]: https://twitter.com/Jack_Franklin
+[Rachel Shillcock]: https://twitter.com/missrachilli
+[Chris Coyier]: https://twitter.com/chriscoyier
+[Github]: https://github.com
 [CSS-Tricks]: https://css-tricks.com
diff --git a/src/posts/2012-10-11-pattern-passwords.md b/src/posts/2012-10-11-pattern-passwords.md
@@ -1,3 +1,7 @@
+---
+summary: An exploration into different authentication techniques
+---
+
 Let's face it we all hate coming up with a password, especially if we forget what it is!
 
 Meet my old password, it was a 12 character monstrosity full of numbers, punctuation and buckets of frustration! In the end I decided enough was enough this password had to go, but what would be it's replacement? The answer lay in Android's pattern lock screen.

diff --git a/src/posts/2012-10-22-deue-1-2.md b/src/posts/2012-10-22-deue-1-2.md
@@ -6,6 +6,8 @@ It's been a while but Deue's finally been in for a facelift. Say hello to 1.2
 
 This update brings with it a new shortcode which allows you to show when the post is expiring either as a date or a really simple javascript powered countdown
 
+---
+
 <del>You can grab the latest over at codecanyon, that's all folks!</del>
 
-__I'm sorry, Deue is no longer available on codecanyon.__
+**I'm sorry, Deue is no longer available on codecanyon.**
diff --git a/src/posts/2013-02-28-suit-and-tie.md b/src/posts/2013-02-28-suit-and-tie.md
@@ -6,6 +6,8 @@ So I realise it's been a fair while since my last post here, but I have been bus
 
 With 2013 (now in full swing) I wanted to repaint my little corner of the internet. I probably did it out of habit, I tend to get the paint & brush out during this time of year.
 
+---
+
 I liked my old colour scheme, it was a good footing and was leaps & bounds ahead of the blank page previous to it. But as with all initial versions there were a few problems.
 
 ![Screenshot of my first design](/img/2013/master.jpg)

diff --git a/src/posts/2013-04-24-small-tool-to-help-look-after-your-eyes.md b/src/posts/2013-04-24-small-tool-to-help-look-after-your-eyes.md
@@ -4,6 +4,8 @@ title: A small tool to help look after your eyes
 
 Both my parents have to wear glasses and a number of my friends do too and while it's recommended that we all take a 5 minute break for every hour we work at a computer very few of us really do.
 
+---
+
 There are a bunch of mac apps out there that do the job, one that comes to mind is [Time Out](https://www.dejal.com/timeout/). While it does the job it did get a little annoying after a month or so. Instead I decided to use my screens brightness to dictate when I should take a break.
 
 After some searching I found a great [little terminal app](https://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20090901021817717) which wraps OSX's brightness settings into something I can work with.

diff --git a/src/posts/2013-04-25-easy-digital-downloads-receipt-bcc.md b/src/posts/2013-04-25-easy-digital-downloads-receipt-bcc.md
@@ -1,5 +1,11 @@
+---
+summary: Earlier this evening Pippin, author of Easy Digital Downloads tweeted about an idea for a simple little plugin to extend EDD's customer receipts
+---
+
 Earlier this evening Pippin, author of Easy Digital Downloads tweeted about [an idea](https://easydigitaldownloads.com/support/topic/send-a-copy-of-the-receipt-to-another-address/) for a simple little plugin to extend EDD's customer receipts, sending blind copies to email addresses specified in the admin.
 
+---
+
 Interested to have a go I opened up my code editor and got cracking. After a while I had myself a working plugin which is now [available on github](https://github.com/studioromeo/edd-bcc)!
 
 Cheers guys!
diff --git a/src/posts/2013-06-11-using-guard-phpunit-with-composer.md b/src/posts/2013-06-11-using-guard-phpunit-with-composer.md
@@ -4,6 +4,8 @@ title: Using guard-phpunit with composer
 
 While reading through a book on unit testing with PHP I ran into a few issues using guard with phpunit. This article guides me (and maybe you) through the process of installing & configuring guard with PHPUnit.
 
+---
+
 First of we need to install phpunit globally using composer. To do this create a new hidden directory called .composer/packages in your home folder
 
 ```bash
@@ -20,7 +22,7 @@ Then inside that directory create a new composer.json file and fill it with your
 }
 ```
 
-Install phpunit by running composer install, this will install phpunit and all of its dependencies. After its completed we then need to edit our __$PATH__ variable so we need to edit our `~/.bash_profile` with the following
+Install phpunit by running composer install, this will install phpunit and all of its dependencies. After its completed we then need to edit our **$PATH** variable so we need to edit our `~/.bash_profile` with the following
 
 ```bash
 export PATH=$HOME/.composer/packages/vendor/bin:$PATH

diff --git a/src/posts/2013-11-12-anchor-cms-in-laravel-part-1.md b/src/posts/2013-11-12-anchor-cms-in-laravel-part-1.md
@@ -1,3 +1,7 @@
+---
+summary: Part 1 of building AnchorCMS in Laravel. I really like AnchorCMS, its super clean and simple and I like the extensibility of Laravel. Can we combine the two?
+---
+
 {% include 'video.html' src:"https://www.youtube.com/embed/edRbZJ7NXTM" %}
 
 This took me an age to prepare, probably the hardest 3 minutes of my life but here it goes. The transcript is below incase anyone wants to read through.

diff --git a/src/posts/2013-12-02-anchor-diary-migrations.md b/src/posts/2013-12-02-anchor-diary-migrations.md
@@ -1,3 +1,7 @@
+---
+summary: Part 2 on our building AnchorCMS in Laravel series. We're looking at migrations today and how we can get our database ship shape!
+---
+
 {% include 'video.html' src:"https://www.youtube.com/embed/nwSwPYKPgEY" %}
 
 Hi Guys, hope you're well!<br/>I've just been cracking on with coding <del>laravel</del> anchor in laravel.

diff --git a/src/posts/2013-12-08-anchor-diary-composer.md b/src/posts/2013-12-08-anchor-diary-composer.md
@@ -1,3 +1,7 @@
+---
+summary: Part 3 of rebuilding AnchorCMS in Laravel. Today we look into composer and how we should set it up
+---
+
 {% include 'video.html', src:"https://www.youtube.com/embed/dMudLAYp7WY" %}
 
 So I just wanted to run through how I envisage anchor working with Laravel.

diff --git a/src/posts/2013-12-10-anchor-diary-resourceful-routes-controllers.md b/src/posts/2013-12-10-anchor-diary-resourceful-routes-controllers.md
@@ -1,5 +1,6 @@
 ---
 title: Anchor Diary Resourceful Routes & Controllers
+summary: Part 4 of AnchorCMS to Laravel, we're looking at building out our routing now
 ---
 
 {% include 'video.html' src:"https://www.youtube.com/embed/oA1PuHz2zBE" %}

diff --git a/src/posts/2014-06-23-quality-assurance.md b/src/posts/2014-06-23-quality-assurance.md
@@ -1,5 +1,6 @@
 ---
 title: A day in the QA Maze
+summary: As a developer its easy to forget how your actions affect other roles. In this post I go over my experience shadowing a QA for the day
 ---
 
 This week is a week that every dev dreads in one way or another. In my opinion going live is never a stress free task no matter how silent it is. In fact I'm pretty tense just writing this article and there's absolutely nothing that could go wrong (I kid myself, it could totes go horribly wrong in ways I couldn't possibly imagine but onwards and upwards?).
@@ -16,7 +17,7 @@ It's this that I thought was trivial, after all the work is done right? All they
 
 For a dev it's easy to know the story behind a ticket, what everyone said, when, and how that relates to other tickets. After all in order to implement it we have to delve into the specifics and down and dirty with the criteria.
 
-A QA has none of this. They have to trawl through the history of the ticket  searching for the simple answer which is usually "What the fudge am I testing here?!"
+A QA has none of this. They have to trawl through the history of the ticket searching for the simple answer which is usually "What the fudge am I testing here?!"
 
 Sometimes the history can be so in-depth and convoluted that a simple changing of the default option on a select can take hours to QA. This sucks, it really really sucks and it makes me sad (even cry) that this is can be true.
 

diff --git a/src/posts/2014-11-30-short-films.md b/src/posts/2014-11-30-short-films.md
@@ -2,6 +2,8 @@ I love short animated cartoons, it's astonishing to see how much detail the anim
 can cram into a 5 minute sequence. My favourite type includes a bit of warm
 cheeky humour with bright colours that make the film appear vibrant and fun.
 
+---
+
 Here is a selection of favourites on vimeo, each one I like for differing reasons
 but they are all ace. I hope you enjoy!
 

diff --git a/src/posts/2015-06-30-dotfiles-2.md b/src/posts/2015-06-30-dotfiles-2.md
@@ -1,5 +1,7 @@
 Dotfiles are a fantastic way to centralize your configuration files for various tools and utilities. Examples of these include Git, Vim and Shells such as Bash, Zsh and Fish.
 
+---
+
 I have been using [holmon's dotfiles](https://github.com/holman/dotfiles) for a while and it has been really good. It comes some nice tweaks and a bootstrap script which symlinks everything with the suffix '.symlink'.
 
 But I wanted to have a go at making my own from scratch, also I wanted to add [homebrew](https://brew.sh) and [casks](https://caskroom.io) into an install script so it installed everything for me.
@@ -11,6 +13,7 @@ I took inspiration from [webpro's](https://github.com/webpro/dotfiles) installat
 **Update** is a convenience script which updates homebrew, npm, and ruby packages as well as a few other chores. I usually fire this off in the morning while I make a cup of coffee, when I come back I know everything is up to date which is nice :)
 
 ## brew.sh, npm.sh and gem.sh
+
 I use npm and ruby gems to install any official packages (eg Sass/Bower) and homebrew for tools and apps such as Git and Google Chrome. These files just have a list like the one below which I can add to whenever. It also checks to see if it's installed it before which is kind of a poor mans idempotent but it works!
 
 ```sh
@@ -32,9 +35,11 @@ apps=(
 ```
 
 ## Atom Editor
+
 I've recently started using [Atom](https://atom.io) again and stumbled across their package manager [APM](https://atom.io/docs/latest/using-atom-atom-packages#command-line). This allows you to install packages from the command line, and even includes an option to read a list of packages to install from a text file. This was brilliant because it meant I could just tell atom to grab the latest plugins and themes.
 
 ## Git
+
 In my original dotfiles I had a prompt which asked me to put in my git name and email. While this is cool it was a bit of a pain to be asked this every time I ran install so I sought inspiration from symfony and created a secrets file.
 
 ```sh

diff --git a/src/posts/2015-09-17-a-hack-at-the-hacknight.md b/src/posts/2015-09-17-a-hack-at-the-hacknight.md
@@ -1,3 +1,7 @@
+---
+summary: My personal experience running an internal hack night for my work mates and what we built on the night
+---
+
 A few of my work chums wanted to put on a hacknight but initially it didn't sound too exciting because there wasn't any end goal to it. You just played around for a few hours and the went home when you eventually got tired & hungry.
 
 This year I've been an attendee at the [simpleweb hacknights](https://simpleweb.co.uk/brands/simpleweb-challenge) and they've been great fun. There's live music, complimentary food (which is delicious) and even prizes to be won at the end of the night!

diff --git a/src/posts/2015-09-24-omsvg.md b/src/posts/2015-09-24-omsvg.md
@@ -1,5 +1,6 @@
 ---
 title: OMSVG
+summary: My first public talk talking about all things SVG and how we can use them in our code to make amazing things
 ---
 
 I've been noted throughout my life to be rather quiet, personally I don't see this as a negative thing - someone has to do the listening after all!

diff --git a/src/posts/2015-10-07-responsive-day-out.md b/src/posts/2015-10-07-responsive-day-out.md
@@ -1,3 +1,7 @@
+---
+summary: Responsive day out is a front-end focused conference sharing tips and tricks on workflow, techniques and experiences on dealing with a responsive web.
+---
+
 This is my second talk of the year and first duet with [Christelle](https://twitter.com/littlecrome) (I'm not sure if thats the right terminology but lets run with it). At [Box](https://boxuk.com) whenever someone goes to a conference they can do a short talk to summarise the event for those who couldn't attend.
 
 Responsive day out is a front-end focused conference sharing tips and tricks on workflow, techniques and experiences on dealing with a responsive web. The nice thing about this conference was it contained both devs and designers!

diff --git a/src/posts/2016-02-13-congestion-busting-blackfire.md b/src/posts/2016-02-13-congestion-busting-blackfire.md
@@ -4,4 +4,6 @@ title: Congestion Busting with Blackfire.io
 
 Recently at work I was involved a project which aimed to improve the performance of one of our analytics systems. We needed a way of measuring our progress of certain user flows before and after optimization so we could give the client feedback on how the project was progressing.
 
+---
+
 [Blackfire](https://blackfire.io/) is a performance measuring tool written by the folks behind the symfony php framework and was ideal for the task. You can read about my experience with blackfire over on the [Box UK dev blog](https://boxuk.com/insight/tech-posts/reducing-congestion-with-blackfire-io).
diff --git a/src/posts/2016-02-23-refactoring-with-bem.md b/src/posts/2016-02-23-refactoring-with-bem.md
@@ -1,5 +1,6 @@
 ---
 title: Refactoring with BEM
+summary: 3 years ago I put the finishing touches to my first design. We'll go over what I've changed since and where I hope to go next
 ---
 
 It was around this time [3 years ago](/suit-and-tie) I was putting the finishing touches to this design.

diff --git a/src/posts/2016-04-19-all-about-atom.md b/src/posts/2016-04-19-all-about-atom.md
@@ -1,3 +1,7 @@
+---
+summary: Atom is an exciting new editor built on web tech. In the talk I go through how atom works and some of the changes I've made to it to make it work for me
+---
+
 I did this talk way back in November last year but it's only now I've managed to see about putting it on the interwebs.
 
 Apologies the fan noise towards the end, I'm still using an old mac from the days when only rappers had gold macs.

diff --git a/src/posts/2016-05-01-polymer.md b/src/posts/2016-05-01-polymer.md
@@ -1,3 +1,7 @@
+---
+summary: Polymer is an framework which is used to create custom HTML elements. In this talk we explore what it is and build a cat pintrest app for cat lovers everywhere
+---
+
 Another talk I did back in November was on Polymer.
 
 {% include 'video.html' src:"https://www.youtube.com/embed/s4dybsEIAIs" %}
-Original file line number
+Diff line change
@@ Expand Up @@
     With 2013 (now in full swing) I wanted to repaint my little corner of the internet. I probably did it out of habit, I tend to get the paint & brush out during this time of year.
+    ---
     I liked my old colour scheme, it was a good footing and was leaps & bounds ahead of the blank page previous to it. But as with all initial versions there were a few problems.
     ![Screenshot of my first design](/img/2013/master.jpg)
@@ Expand Down @@
Original file line number	Diff line number	Diff line change
Expand Up		@@ -4,4 +4,6 @@ title: Congestion Busting with Blackfire.io

		Recently at work I was involved a project which aimed to improve the performance of one of our analytics systems. We needed a way of measuring our progress of certain user flows before and after optimization so we could give the client feedback on how the project was progressing.

		---

		[Blackfire](https://blackfire.io/) is a performance measuring tool written by the folks behind the symfony php framework and was ideal for the task. You can read about my experience with blackfire over on the [Box UK dev blog](https://boxuk.com/insight/tech-posts/reducing-congestion-with-blackfire-io).