When sending a single item array to a Bicep template you may get an error like this:

ERROR: InvalidTemplate - Deployment template validation failed: 'Template parameter 'allowedIPAddresses' was provided an invalid value. Expected a value of type 'Array', but received a value of type 'String'.

This is down to the fact that Bash arrays when used with the Azure CLI can be a little surprising. If we initialise a single item array then it's not an array. It's a string. This is a bit of a pain when you're trying to pass a single item array to a Bicep template. It's possible to work around this with JSON and Bicep user defined types. Let's see how.

Azure Static Web Apps staging environments allow you to test changes before they go live. This post shows how to use Playwright against staging environments with GitHub Actions. It's a follow up to my previous post on using Lighthouse with Azure Static Web Apps staging environments.

I've wanted to take a look at some of the alternative JavaScript runtimes for a while. The thing that has held me back is npm compatibility. I want to be able to run my code in a runtime that isn't Node.js and still be able to use npm packages. I've been using ts-node for a long time now; it's what I reach for when I'm building any kind of console app. In this post I want to port a console app from ts-node to Bun and see how easy it is.

Node.js 18 doesn't allow legacy TLS renegotion by default. But some APIs still need it. Also, corporate network traffic network is often subject to SSL inspection and that can manifest as a downgrade in TLS negotiation. Palo Alto Networks SSL Inbound Inspection is an example of an SSL inspector that can downgrade TLS.

This post shows how to support work around this issue with Axios.

Not everyone values pull requests. I really do, and this post explains why.

By default, Docusaurus blogs don't add breadcrumb structured data to their blog posts. It's not hard to make it happen though; this post shows how to add it using the JSON-LD format.

You can use Bicep and GitHub Actions to build and deploy to a static website on Azure Static Web Apps. This post demonstrates how.

A new API landed in Docusaurus 2.3.0 - it's called createFeedItems. It's a great API that allows you to tweak the Atom / RSS / JSON feeds for your blog. This post shows how to use it with the git commit date.

This post builds upon a technique we've previously used to drive the lastmod properties of our sitemap. You can read about driving lastmod from git commit here.

Image optimisation can be automated with the TinyPNG API. This post demonstrates how to do that.

By using fetchpriority on your Largest Contentful Paint you can improve your Core Web Vitals. This post implements that with Docusaurus v2. There is a follow on post that details migrating this plugin to Docusaurus v3.

In October 2022 traffic to my blog dropped like a stone. What happened? Somehow I ruined my SEO. Don't be me. I'll tell you what I got up to and hopefully you can avoid doing the same.

Updated 20/11/2023: SEO fixed!​

There's a follow up to this named "How we fixed my SEO" that you may enjoy.

Support for Node.js 16 for Azure Pipelines custom pipelines task extensions has arrived. From a TypeScript perspective, this post documents how to migrate from a Node.js 10 custom task to one that runs on Node 16 using azure-pipelines-task-lib.

Updated 26th September 2024 - Node.js 20 support available​

It's now possible to use Node.js 20 in tasks! See more details below:

• https://aka.ms/node-runner-guidance
• There is a guide on how to migrate tasks to Node.js 20 here

What's more we're going to start to see warnings emitted in pipelines when an EOL Node version is used.

Application Insights are a great way to monitor Azure Static Web Apps and Azure Functions. But how do you deploy that using Bicep? Let's find out!

Cloudinary offers an image CDN which can improve performance of your site. This post details how to get Docusaurus v2 to use Cloudinary to serve optimised images. There is a follow on post that details migrating this plugin to Docusaurus v3.

Azure Static Web Apps can perform URL redirects using the routes section in the staticwebapp.config.json. However it is limited. This post will demonstrate dynamic URL redirects with Azure Functions.

Azure Static Web Apps can generally build themselves with Oryx. If you need finer grained control of your build, you can with skip_app_build: true and some GitHub Actions.

The dev.to API provides a way to cross post your Docusaurus blogs to dev.to. This post describes how to do that with TypeScript, Node.js and the dev.to API.

Azure Static Web Apps doesn't support deep linking with authentication. The post login redirect parameter of post_login_redirect_uri does not support query string parameters. This post describes how to work around this limitation.

Custom font usage can introduce cumulative layout shift (or "jank") to your website. This post shows how to use fontaine to reduce this with Docusaurus sites.

This post demonstrates enriching an XML sitemap with lastmod timestamps based on git commits. The sitemap being enriched in this post was generated automatically by Docusaurus. The techniques used are predicated on the way Docusaurus works; in that it is file based. You could easily use this technique for another file based website solution; but you would need tweaks to target the relevant files you would use to drive your lastmod.

If you're interested in applying the same technique to your RSS / Atom / JSON feeds in Docusaurus, you may find this post interesting.