About this blog
This blog is where the zxn.uk team writes about the work: the apps we build, the websites we run for clients, and the plumbing underneath.
Why it exists
Most studio blogs are written to rank. This one is written to show how we think. If you are deciding whether to trust us with your website or your app, the best evidence we can give you is how we make decisions when nobody is watching, including the ones that went wrong.
The rules we write by
- Real numbers or none. Every figure comes from our own logs, repositories or invoices, and each post lists where its numbers come from.
- Honest dates. We started writing this in November 2026, then went back through our history. Older posts are dated to when the work happened and only say what we knew then. Anything we learned later sits in a clearly marked update at the end.
- Clients say yes first. We never name a client, show their site or quote their numbers without their written OK.
- No secrets. No keys, account ids, internal hostnames or anything that would help someone attack us or the people we work for.
- Mistakes stay in. A postmortem that only praises the fix is an advert. We say what broke.
How posts are organised
Every post has one category (who it is for), one format (what kind of post it is), the projects it is about, and a few tags from a fixed list.
| Category | What you will find |
|---|---|
| Engineering | How we build and run things: architecture, infrastructure, tooling and the trade-offs behind them. |
| Product | Our own apps: why they exist, what we shipped, what users taught us. |
| Studio | How the company works: decisions, process, money, people and the odd mistake. |
| Format | What it is |
|---|---|
| Case study | A project from brief to result, with numbers. |
| Decision record | A choice we made, the options we turned down, and how it is going. |
| Deep dive | One technical idea, explained properly. |
| By the numbers | What the data says. |
| Postmortem | Something broke. What happened, why, and what changed. |
| Field notes | Shorter observations from the work. |
| Release notes | What shipped, and why it matters. |
Who writes it
- Mark Lovelady, Director. Builds most of our software.
- Edward Clarke, Director. A decade of website development, testing and customer success. Builds our client sites.
- James McFadyen, Software Engineer & Director. A decade of programming experience.
What we measure
This blog uses the same visit counting as the rest of zxn.uk: Google Analytics 4 and Microsoft Clarity. Neither runs until you press Accept on the cookie banner. If you accept, we count which posts are read, how far down the page you get, and whether you use the contents list, the related posts or a link to our quote page. Clarity also records how pages are used, such as taps and scrolling. If you reject, or ignore the banner, nothing is sent to either. Your choice is the same one you make on zxn.uk, and the "Cookie settings" link in the footer lets you change it. Full details are in the privacy notice.
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