Nicola Mustone

Support Lead @ Automattic

Leadership, web, programming. Short essays and hands-on guides, focused on results, not hype.

Essays

Reflections, lessons, and guides on leadership, the web, and programming.

  • Moving this blog to BUT. Honestly (buthonestly.io)

    I’m Closing This Blog, But I’m Not Going Anywhere

    For the past years, this blog has been my home on the internet.
    It’s where I wrote about WordPress, WooCommerce, and the work I was doing around them.

    That phase has been important for me. It helped me think in public, share what I was learning, and meet many of you who read, commented, or replied to my emails.

    But today, this space no longer reflects where I am in my life and work.
    So it’s time to close this chapter and move to a new one.

    Why I’m Moving On

    When I started this blog, my work and interests were centered on WordPress and WooCommerce.
    Most of my days were spent building, maintaining, and thinking about that ecosystem.

    Over time, my focus changed. I found myself more interested in:

    • How people work together and lead each other
    • How we build and maintain web technologies over the long term
    • How programming shapes our thinking and the products we create

    I still care about WordPress and WooCommerce, and they might show up in my writing from time to time. But I no longer want them to define the frame.

    nicolamustone.blog feels like a snapshot of a previous version of me.
    Keeping it as my main writing space has started to feel like wearing clothes that no longer fit.

    BUT. Honestly is my new home for writing and my newsletter.

    What Is BUT. Honestly?

    It exists for a simple reason: I wanted one place that reflects my current work, questions, and experiments without being tied to a single tool, framework, job title, or my name.

    On BUT. Honestly I write about:

    The goal is not to chase trends or hot takes. The goal is to write essays that are useful, clear, and grounded in real experience.

    Some of these essays are technical. Others are about decision-making, communication, or how to navigate complexity at work. All of them are written for humans first.

    If that sounds interesting, you can read the existing essays and subscribe at buthonestly.io.

    What Happens to This Blog

    I’m not deleting anything.

    This blog will stay online as an archive.
    Some of the articles will remain here, especially the ones that belong to this specific season of my work. Others have been moved over to my new home at BUT. Honestly.

    So if you find this site through an old link or a search result, you can still read what I wrote here. In some cases, you’ll see that the same article now lives on BUT. Honestly instead. That is intentional: I want my current work to have a single, clearer home.

    What Happens to the Newsletter

    If you subscribed to my newsletter through nicolamustone.blog, I will move your subscription over to BUT. Honestly as well.

    I’m assuming this is reasonable because the topics are similar and many of you signed up to follow my writing, not just a specific domain name. Still, you remain fully in control.

    When you receive the next email from me, it will come from BUT. Honestly. If that no longer feels relevant to you, you can unsubscribe with one click using the link at the bottom of the email.

    No hard feelings if you do.

    A Small Thank You

    If you’ve read even one article on this blog, thank you.
    If you’ve been here for years, an even bigger thank you.

    Writing on nicolamustone.blog has shaped how I think and how I work.
    Now I want to take what I’ve learned and build something more aligned with where I am today.

    I’m closing this blog, but I’m not disappearing.
    I’m just continuing the conversation in a place that feels more honest to who I am now.

    If you want to keep following along, I’ll see you at BUT. Honestly.

  • close up shot of a woman

    Vibe Coding: The Hottest Programming Language of the Year

    What’s the hottest programming language of this year?

    According to Andrej Karpathy, it’s your language! The renowned computer scientist coined the term “vibe coding” in his now world-famous post on X1, where he introduced the concept of AI-assisted coding taken to its extreme. It’s not that it didn’t exist before, but he gave it a name, and with that, a whole new meaning.

    So what exactly is vibe coding? And why do I think you should try it (at least once)? Let’s explore that together.

    Read more →
  • pen in an opened blank notebook

    How I Automated My X Account Cleanup

    In Italy, the 2nd of November is the Day of the Dead. A time to remember and, in a way, revive what’s gone.

    So I thought, what better day to bring back my old X (formerly Twitter) account?

    When I logged in after four years of inactivity, what I found was a graveyard of auto-retweets, broken links, and random thoughts from a younger me. Before I could start posting again about my writing, my old profile needed a proper account cleanup.

    Read more →
  • person holding white and black xbox one game controller

    How Gaming Made Me a Better Leader

    Can playing games actually make you a better leader?

    It might sound strange at first. When most people think of leadership, they imagine meetings, strategies, and deadlines, not dice rolls, co-op sessions, or horror chases. Yet over time, I’ve realized that the games I’ve played have shaped how I lead, collaborate, and communicate more than any course or management book ever could.

    Games like Dungeons & Dragons, Baldur’s Gate 3, Divinity: Original Sin 2, Dead by Daylight, Chained Together, and probably more games I can’t even remember have each, in their own way, taught me something about how people work together. How trust forms and how progress happens when goals are shared.

    This post is about those lessons and how the virtual worlds I’ve explored have made me a better lead in the real one.

    Read more →
  • several handheld tools on white printer paper

    Top 5 Essential WordPress Plugins I Always Install (and Why)

    Whenever I set up a new WordPress site, whether it’s a small personal blog or a larger project, there are a few plugins that always make it onto my list.

    WordPress owes much of its flexibility to plugins, but that also makes it easy to overload a site with too many tools doing the same thing.

    Over the years, I’ve refined my setup down to a handful of reliable, lightweight, and well-maintained plugins that cover the essentials: SEO, analytics, security, and customization. These are plugins I’ve used across multiple websites, and they’ve proven to be stable, easy to manage, and genuinely useful in day-to-day site operations.

    In this post, I’ll walk you through the five WordPress plugins I always install first, why they’re essential, and a few tips on how to get the most out of them.

    Read more →