Blog
Field notes from building DesignSetGo Apps.
Page 3 of 7. Design rationale, release notes, and the occasional aside.
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App secrets, the right way: why DesignSetGo never asks you to paste a key into your source
Read post →The first thing most AI plugins do is ask for your OpenAI key. DesignSetGo asks for nothing. The site already has a Connector with provider credentials; apps call dsgo.ai.prompt() and inherit them.
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Calculated Fields Form vs a DesignSetGo App: when each one is the right call
Read post →Calculated Fields Form is great for form-shaped math. It is the wrong tool for a custom-branded calculator that reads your products or posts. Here is the honest decision table.
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Vibe coding vs hiring a WordPress developer: when each is the right call
Read post →The honest decision table. Where AI builders (Claude, Cursor, ChatGPT, v0, Lovable) beat hiring a developer for a WordPress feature, where they do not, and the middle case where you should use both.
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How to add a mortgage calculator to a real-estate WordPress site
Read post →Real-estate agents reach for generic mortgage calculator plugins and end up with a sidebar widget nobody clicks. A DesignSetGo App lets you embed a calculator inside the listing post, pre-filled with that listing’s price.
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Ghost, Substack, Hashnode, or WordPress for the blog on your vibe-coded site?
Read post →Four real options for the blog half of a Lovable, v0, Bolt, Claude Code, or Astro site. Which one fits behind a vibe-coded homepage without fighting it, and which one is the lock-in tax you do not want.
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blog.yoursite.com or yoursite.com/blog? A decision for your vibe-coded site
Read post →Three real ways to add a WordPress blog to a vibe-coded site: subdomain, subdirectory reverse proxy, or one WP install hosting the front-end too. The SEO, cookies, and auth consequences of each.
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Keep WordPress for the blog, vibe-code the rest? Try one site instead of two.
Read post →You vibe-coded your homepage in Lovable, v0, or Claude Code. You still want WordPress for the blog. The natural plan splits across two hosts; here is the one-site shape that does not.
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How to create a members area on WordPress without a heavy plugin
Read post →MemberPress is 70MB and adds 40 wp-admin pages. MemberMouse is $40/month per site. You do not need either to ship a logged-in members area. Here is the smaller path.
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dsgo.user.can() deep dive: gating UI without writing auth
Read post →Every app eventually needs ‘show this if the user can edit posts.’ Most React apps reinvent it with a custom auth library. The bridge gives you dsgo.user.can(‘edit_posts’) and you are done.
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The four boring parts of WordPress your vibe-coded app secretly needs
Read post →Auth, content modeling, user accounts, admin UI. Every vibe-coded app reinvents these four things. WordPress already has all four and your starter inherits them for free.
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The agency client portal, in one weekend: a retro
Read post →Yesterday’s tutorial shipped a full client portal end to end. This is the founder-voice unpack: three things that worked, two things I cut, and one thing I would tell a freelancer reading the post cold.
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Build an Astro WooCommerce storefront without the headless plumbing
Read post →If you search “astro woocommerce” you get a parade of headless tutorials: stand up Astro on Vercel, point it at WooCommerce’s Store API over the network, build the auth bridge, build the cart sync, manage two deploys, two domains, two bills. By the time you have a working checkout you have written half a platform. […]