Personal site and blog of Susi
I built the same website — same content, same editorial tasks — in five different content management systems (TYPO3, Strapi, Pimcore, Storyblok, Payload) and gave a talk about it at TYPO3 Developer Days 2026. Slides and live demos are public; here is the writeup.
All three deploy zero-downtime releases with the same releases/current/shared symlink pattern — Capistrano invented it, Deployer and Shippy both cite it as their inspiration. The real differences are the runtime each one needs to deploy, the config format, and what ships built in beyond the deploy itself.
shippy backup produces a ZIP with a database dump and shared files; shippy gitlab:upload pushes it to a package registry. Wired into a scheduled GitLab CI pipeline that becomes an automated nightly off-server backup — and the same ZIP restores straight into DDEV for local development against real production data.
Shippy is a single Go binary that deploys Composer-based PHP projects over SSH with zero-downtime, atomic releases. Real .shippy.yaml configs for TYPO3 v14 and Pimcore, the eight-step deploy process, and the bootstrap gotchas that only show up on a genuinely empty server.
Set up Playwright for a Next.js site with automatic dev server management, and why its accessibility-tree-based locators mean your tests double as accessibility checks.
Run GitLab CI/CD jobs directly inside DDEV environments — the same setup you use locally, now in your pipeline.
Discover Traefik and mkcert setup for HTTPS and local development. Configure Traefik, generate SSL certs, and manage (PHP) projects efficiently.
Integrate Sentry with TYPO3 for real-time error tracking and performance monitoring: installation, configuration, and best practices.
Navigation icons can be a great addition to your TYPO3 website, providing a visual representation of different pages in the navigation menu.
Set up persistent local volumes on Docker Desktop’s Kubernetes (WSL2 or Mac). Create PV/PVC, bind to a path, and keep data across pod restarts.
GitLab provides a TYPO3 project template. Learn how to start a new project from it, run it locally with Docker, and leverage built-in CI.
How to change the docroot of a TYPO3 composer-based install while using DDEV — switch from public to html and adjust DDEV settings.
Complete guide to set up Shopware 6 on DDEV: installation, Elasticsearch, storefront/administration build & watch, HTTPS/ports, and useful tips.
Use a TYPO3 Symfony Console command to import data, validate entities via Extbase, and persist them with your Extbase repository.
Import definitions from separate Symfony Dependency Injection YAML files to keep services.yaml small and maintainable (works well in TYPO3 projects).
Build a TYPO3 website with Tailwind CSS and Symfony Encore/Webpack: install, configure, and integrate assets in Fluid templates.
TYPO3 Backend Module Registration — how to register a custom TYPO3 backend module, render it with Fluid templates and register custom icons or CSS.
Fixing Xdebug step debugging in DDEV when the client can’t connect on port 9003, especially on WSL2 and PHPStorm.
Implement automatic language detection in TYPO3 using a PSR-15 middleware that redirects users based on Accept-Language or custom logic.
Format dates, numbers, and currencies locale-aware in TYPO3 Fluid templates.
Run tests with coverage and debug inside DDEV from PhpStorm: interpreters, path mappings, Xdebug, and PHPUnit config.
Build (and alternatively install) PHP 8 on WSL2 Ubuntu: prerequisites, configure flags, make install, switching versions, and troubleshooting.
A look at PHP performance evolution across versions based on common micro-benchmarks and real-world tasks.
Exploring PHP 8’s JIT impact in a Symfony-style workload: expectations vs. reality.
Use phpdbg to generate PHPUnit coverage without Xdebug – faster startup, simple CI usage, and easy IDE integration.
Configure and use TYPO3 image crop variants (focus/cover areas) in TCA and Fluid to deliver correctly cropped/responsive images.
Extend the TYPO3 Configuration backend module to expose custom settings, readers, or debug info for your extensions.
Run TYPO3 core/extension tests with PHP 8 locally: requirements, Composer constraints, and invoking the test runner.
Provide a TCA tree (renderType=selectTree) backed by a custom data provider (non‑DB source) for configuration-like selections.
Use Symfony VarDumper’s dump()/dd() effectively in TYPO3 for quick, readable debugging in CLI and backend contexts.
Handy Bash and SQL snippets I reach for regularly: search/replace, one‑liners, and maintenance helpers.
Spin up a local observability stack (Prometheus for metrics, Loki for logs, Grafana for dashboards) using docker-compose with minimal configs.
Small PSR‑15 middleware example for TYPO3: register a middleware that appends a custom HTTP response header.
Create a reusable custom date table in Power BI using Power Query (M) with fiscal year support and handy helper columns.
Mock HTTP responses and verify requests in unit tests using Guzzle’s MockHandler and History middleware with PSR-18/PSR-7 clients.
Ingest Caddy access logs with Promtail: configure scrape job, parse logfmt/json, extract labels and fields, and forward to Loki/Grafana.
TYPO3 v10 deprecated and v11 removed Fluid widgets. Replace the Fluid pagination widget with the native Paginator API introduced in TYPO3 10.2.
Use the built-in supervisord in DDEV to run long-running workers (e.g. Symfony Messenger) and emulate cron-like intervals for TYPO3 Scheduler without extra services.
Measuring Composer 2 vs. Composer 1.10 on real projects (Shopware 6 and TYPO3) — setup, commands, and the impact on day‑to‑day DX.
Overview of hCaptcha, key settings, integrations (Laravel, Symfony), and how to use it in TYPO3 via an EXT:form element.
Install and configure PHPStan for your project and wire it into PhpStorm – including baselines, framework stubs, and running inside Docker/DDEV.
Generate fast code coverage for TYPO3 (or any PHP project) using phpdbg — run from PhpStorm or CLI without Xdebug, with tips for setup and troubleshooting.
How to migrate from Twig's deprecated transchoice to trans using ICU messages: rename files, rewrite messages, pass variables, and register ICU resources.
Configure PhpStorm to run everything inside DDEV: CLI/Composer, PHPUnit with coverage, debugging (Xdebug), and quality tools – fully integrated.
Enable the Swagger UI for Shopware 6 Store API in dev/test despite CSP blocks by adjusting DI parameters; plus tips for mocking with Prism.
A snapshot of my 2020 development environment: IDEs, terminals, tooling, and quality-of-life tweaks.
Add syntax highlighting with Prism.js to TYPO3/CKEditor: include assets, configure CKEditor, and render highlighted code blocks.
Wire Bootstrap 4 into a TYPO3 site package and bundle assets with Webpack: project structure, configs, and Fluid integration.