About

About This Blog (and the Person Behind It)

Hi, I’m Debs — web designer, developer, WordPress wrangler, and the person behind Webby Spice, a web design and WordPress maintenance service. I’ve been building websites since 2001, which means I’ve lived through the full horror show: table-based layouts, Internet Explorer 6, the rise and fall of Flash, WYSIWYG editors that promised the world and delivered chaos, and more WordPress major versions than I care to count.

I’ve seen trends come and go. I’ve migrated more websites than is probably healthy. And I’ve spent more hours than I’d like to admit deciphering outdated documentation at 11pm on a Tuesday.

This blog is where I document the reality of that work — the wins, the head-scratchers, and the moments where something that should take twenty minutes takes four hours. Honestly and with the occasional laugh.

Why “Webby Spice”?

Glad you asked. It’s all the fault of a film, a best friend, and a moment of frankly accurate observation.

We were watching Spice World together — as one does — when my best friend turned to me and said: “You should be the Spice Girls computer geek. You could be called Webby Spice.”

She wasn’t wrong. The name stuck, the business followed, and here we are.

A Brief and Slightly Terrifying History

For those who like context (and a timeline that doubles as a trip through web history):

  • 2001 — Got into computers and technology — the obsession begins.
  • 2002 — Started building websites properly. Learned HTML & CSS, got acquainted with WYSIWYG editors like NetObjects Fusion and MS FrontPage. The less said about those, the better.
  • 2003 — Signed up for a first domain and hosting with Hostgator. Launched a first public website into the world.
  • 2009 — Discovered Adobe Dreamweaver. Landed first proper paying client. Things got serious.
  • 2011 — Jumped into WordPress, starting with version 3.2 (Sonny). Never really looked back.
  • 2012 — Got into drag & drop WordPress theme frameworks — mainly Headway Themes.
  • 2013 — Moved from shared hosting to a dedicated server to host client websites properly.
  • 2015 — Upgraded to a VPS server. Felt very grown up.
  • 2016 — Headway Themes released version 4.0 and it was… controversial. Switched to Elementor and never looked back.
  • 2018 — Moved the VPS to InMotion Hosting. Running 22 websites on cPanel. The empire grows.
  • 2025 — Introduced to Claude.ai by a friend’s eldest. Had a brief look. Did nothing more. (Famous last words.)
  • 2026 — VPS server move, upgrade, and a dawning realisation that the old support safety net wasn’t quite what it used to be. Decided to actually engage with Claude properly. And so the misadventure began.

 

So What Is This Blog, Exactly?

Part journal, part reference, part “please learn from my experience so you don’t have to”.

I write about real work: client projects, server migrations, WooCommerce integrations, WordPress maintenance, and whatever else lands on my desk. The posts are honest about what went wrong, what the guides got wrong, and what actually worked in the end.

Claude features heavily — not as a magic wand, but as a genuinely useful working partner. I’ll be transparent about where it helps, where it falls short, and what working alongside AI actually looks like in day-to-day web work (spoiler: it’s less dramatic and more “oh that’s actually quite handy” than the headlines suggest).

Whether you’re a fellow web professional, a small business owner trying to make sense of your own website, or just someone who ended up here via a very specific Google search at an inconvenient hour — welcome. Pull up a chair.

Debs | Webby Spice

Web design, WordPress maintenance, and occasional misadventures in Essex, England (UK).