I’m Steven, a software engineer and technical leader based in the west coast of Scotland. I’m the CTO at Digitonic, where we develop technologies for the investor relations and igaming industries.
Malicious bots were burning through my Laravel Nightwatch quota by hitting fake routes like /wp-login.php and /.env. Inspired by Michael Dyrynda’s approach using Cloudflare WAF, I built a portable NGINX blocklist that stops these 404s before they reach Laravel — no proxy required.
Speed up Laravel onboarding with a powerful Makefile. Automate Herd Pro setup, install dependencies, and seed databases for a consistent, one-command setup experience.
Rebuilding my personal site from scratch using Laravel 12, Sushi, Folio, and Spatie packages — no CMS, no clutter, just a clean, fast dev blog.
