On development, design, and building things
I keep a real pre-launch checklist that includes a hash-pinned CSP, HSTS, and the rest of the standard security-header set. Out of curiosity, I checked whether the platforms musicians actually use — Bandzoogle, Squarespace, Wix, WordPress.com — ship the same thing. Here's what curl -I actually returned.
I build custom business software, so I audited my own live .NET app on Azure. The biggest win was moving secrets into Key Vault, but the most useful findings were two switches that were off and a lockout I finally tested.
My newest side project puts two things under one roof: a public lead-intake system for two different businesses, and a private personal ERP for my own freelance pipeline — sharing a process but never a data boundary. Here's how that boundary actually gets enforced (I deliberately broke it to check), why a status field can't tell you when something happened, and what went wrong deploying to Azure.
If you're a small business comparing a $50/month site builder against a five-figure agency quote, there's a third option: someone who's spent years building software for organizations that can't afford to get it wrong, applying that same discipline at small-business scale and price. Here's the honest case, backed by real projects.
My other site, dougrosenberg.com, is where my saxophonist/composer identity lives — and it was running on a stock Blazor template that could have belonged to anyone. I rebuilt it in Astro on Cloudflare's edge, replacing assumed performance and content-parity claims with a real, checkable test suite. Here's what a template actually costs you, and what it took to fix.
GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) is the new SEO — but if your site is a client-rendered single-page app, you might be structurally invisible to the AI crawlers it's supposed to court. I audited my own Blazor WASM portfolio and found the problem was worse, and weirder, than I expected.
A technical deep-dive into ArborKin: how I solved tree layout visualization, drag state management, and photo handling in Blazor Server. Lessons learned building a production genealogy app.
An introduction to my new blog where I'll share thoughts on software development, design, and technology.
A deep dive into creating an interactive portfolio using Blazor WebAssembly, CSS3, and modern web standards.