Nicola Mustone

Support Lead @ Automattic


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


Productivity

Focus and planning systems to stay productive without burning out.

  • 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.

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  • 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.

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  • 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.

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  • Just a year ago, the digital landscape witnessed a seismic shift with the launch of ChatGPT.

    This groundbreaking AI quickly became the fastest-growing app in history, a testament to its transformative potential.

    Among its many feats, the way ChatGPT and AI in general have reshaped the WordPress world stands out, a change I’ve personally experienced and embraced in my professional journey.

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  • In the ever-evolving world of e-commerce, staying ahead of the curve is crucial. For Romanian online businesses, a significant development has emerged: the introduction of WooPayments, now fully operable in Romania. This post delves into the benefits of WooPayments, its integration with Stripe, and how it surpasses other gateways. Furthermore, we’ll explore the synergy between WooPayments and SmartBill with the SmartBill WooCommerce Integration, especially focusing on a custom plugin I developed for seamless multi-currency transactions and invoicing.

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