Paul Conroy

If the site of a speaker breaking out in a cold sweat of panic, realising their talk is out of date 30 seconds after writing it, isn't quite enough for you, there's a stellar line up this year - www.phpconference.co.uk/schedule

Code PHPUK26 will get you 10% off - www.phpconference.co.uk/tickets

YouTube video by PHP UK Conference Vibe Coding vs. Engineering: Building AI Apps in PHP with Paul Conroy

Ahead of the conference, I spoke with @daveliddament.bsky.social about vibe coding vs ai-assisted dev. We also discussed what a stupid idea it is to try preparing a talk on AI-assisted development more than 10 minutes in advance, given how fast the space is moving 🫥

www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBJJ...

Only 2 weeks until this year's @phpukconference.bsky.social!

My talk will be the story behind #wdydy site EverythingIsShowbiz.com - a side project that started as "search podcast transcripts" and spiralled into the good, bad, and ridiculous world of AI-assisted development in PHP.

#php #phpuk

WE HEREBY ANNOUNCE A LIVE SHOW IN DUBLIN. March 3rd, baby. On sale now. Tickets on sale now: www.ticketmaster.ie/artist/56740...

🎭 When a #PHP side project turns into a full #AI-powered system… @conroyp.bsky.social talks about the real lessons from building PHP + AI beyond the hype.

#IntPHPCon |📍BER | 📅 June 8 – 12, 26

The session: https://f.mtr.cool/nfztgkerhg

#GenerativeAI #SideProjects

* It being 2026, the "I" here of course is the royal I - an afternoon of poking and prodding at Claude code until we were broadly on the same page. The impact of Claude code and it's like on lowering the barrier to bringing ideas to life is genuinely phenomenal, and worth a deeper dive into.

TicTacGoAway - Tic-Tac-Toe, Evolved You only get 3 pieces-place a 4th and your oldest vanishes! A fresh twist on the classic that keeps every game exciting.

The twist is that your oldest move vanishes from the board, meaning only 3 pieces "in play" at any one time. It's a small change which makes a big change to the strategies you can use! It also massively cuts down on draws.

Try it out at tictacgoaway.com!

TicTacGoAway - Tic-Tac-Toe, Evolved You only get 3 pieces-place a 4th and your oldest vanishes! A fresh twist on the classic that keeps every game exciting.

Tic Tac Toe (or Xs and Os) is a fun game, loved by small kids in particular. Though once you get the hang of it, it more often than not ends up in a draw.

TicTacGoAway.com is a version I* put together which adds a small twist to cut down on draws and get more winners.

⚡#ModernPHP offers tools that make your code cleaner, safer & more expressive.

@conroyp.bsky.social highlights the features many devs miss and how they elevate your everyday workflow 

#IntPHPCon|📍 BER | 📅 June 8 – 12, 26

🎓The session: https://f.mtr.cool/pvchkoxnuo

#CleanCode #DeveloperExperience

Reflections on 30 Years of PHP Marking PHP’s 30th anniversary, this interview gathers insights from leading experts reflecting on the language’s evolution, resilience, and enduring impact on the web. From its role in the dot-com boom to its modern capabilities and rich frameworks, PHP continues to adapt and thrive. Looking ahead to PHP 8.5 and beyond, the discussion highlights a language that remains vibrant, innovative, and essential to the future of web development.

🎉 PHP turns 30!
A new @devmio.bsky.social expert roundtable brings leading experts — to share what makes PHP still thrive 🚀

ft. @spriebsch.bsky.social, @naderman.de, @conroyp.bsky.social - and many more!

Dive into the full interview: https://tinyurl.com/59ubsdrs

#IntPHPcon #PHP #WebDev #PHP8

Predictable Cross-Currency Payments with Stripe's FX Quotes API Cross-currency payments don’t need to be guesswork. Stripe's FX Quotes API lets you lock exchange rates, eliminate reconciliation surprises, and give customers clear, predictable pricing across curren...

I did a write up on the ins and outs of this new API - how it works, and the common gotchas when you first start working with the API.

If you build global marketplaces or handle multi-currency pricing, this is a big QoL upgrade 👇
www.conroyp.com/articles/pre...

Stripe’s new FX Quotes API fixes a huge chunk of this. 💱🔒

It lets you lock exchange rates upfront for PaymentIntents and Transfers, so you know exactly what each party will pay or receive.

No surprises. No drift. No “why did this settle at €19.85, not €20?” support tickets.

Expanding your business internationally has never been easier - more demand, more channels, more global customers. 🌍

But the payments side hasn’t always kept up. Multi-currency pricing still creates pain: unpredictable FX, messy reconciliation, transfers landing a few cents off - no fun!

This year's "52 things I learned list" from Tom Whitwell is a great one. Tax evasion via snail farming, Apple insulting Korean manhood, the Taiwanese receipt lottery, and Marchetti's constant - lots of super trivia in there!

medium.com/@tomwhitwell...

How to Change YouTube Playback Speed with a Simple Bookmarklet Playback speed options now appear on some YouTube videos, and vanish on others. This lightweight bookmarklet lets you toggle playback speed controls on any YouTube video.

I've written up a short explainer on how this works, with simple installation instructions for the bookmarklet:

www.conroyp.com/articles/how...

So we turn to bookmarklets - an older tool, fallen out of favour in recent years.

A tiny snippet of JavaScript saved as a browser bookmark - click it, a custom UI appears, set any speed you want, done.

A nice bonus of YouTube being an SPA is that settings stick between videos!

Fortunately, the underlying video element still listens.
Pop open the console and run:

document.getElementsByTagName("video")[0].playbackRate = 2.5

...and boom, instant speed-up to 2.5x, or whatever speed you like.

But nobody wants to open DevTools on *every* video.

When I’m watching longer YouTube videos, I usually bump the speed up to 2× or 3×. Recently though, YouTube’s UI has gotten a tad erratic.

Some videos have the full speed menu. Others only show the menu, but stick at 1x with no way to change it.

Why Your Average Position in Google Improved But Your Traffic Didn't Noticed your Google Search Console "average position" suddenly improving while traffic drops? You're not alone. A quiet change to Google's systems removed millions of bot-generated impressions, making...

It's a good thing - more realistic, human-only data.
But if your SEO reporting leans on impressions, time to annotate those charts.

Full write-up here: www.conroyp.com/articles/why...

#seo #webdev #googlerankings

Without the impressions data from those bots, average position shoots up, but without a big traffic surge to go with it.

Google isn't counting so many robots any more, so the Search Console stats are more realistic than they have been in the past.

In September, Google quietly retired the old &num=100 parameter. SEO tools and bots often this to fetch 100 results per page, rather than iterating over a load of pages 1 by 1.

Those bots and scrapers were creating fake "impressions" for positions 20–100.

Over the past couple of months, "Average Position" in Google Search Console has shot up across loads of sites.

Normally great news! Except impressions and clicks are often down. 🤔

So what's going on under the hood here?

Thanks to everyone who came along to my talk at @phpconference.bsky.social today, "Modern PHP Features You’re Probably Not Using (But Should Be)". Great to see so many familiar faces in the room, and also to talk to some new ones afterwards!

The slides are up now at speakerdeck.com/conroyp/mode...

💡 What happened at #IntPHPcon Munich?

⚙️ @conroyp.bsky.social – Modern PHP Features You’re Probably Not Using
🏗 Thiago Cordeiro – #DDD & Clean Architecture

A great mix of modern syntax and solid structure — showing how PHP keeps evolving for scalable, maintainable apps 💪

#PHP #SoftwareArchitecture

Turning Off LinkedIn's "Missed Notification" Alert LinkedIn has started sending a persistent notification to alert me to notifications I might have missed. It leads to generally-useless content, yet my monkey brain can't ignore it. I need a way to kil...

If your monkey brain is anything like mine, it's hard to ignore notifications coming through. Annoying when they're pointless!
Fortunately there's a simple way to turn them off on Android.

www.conroyp.com/articles/tur...

LinkedIn have taken to sending notifications warning you of notifications you may have missed. Potentially useful! In practice, not so much.

They're not warning of useful ones (connection requests, post responses), but "person you don't know is playing game Y/posting in group Z you're not in" etc.

Build Stuff 2025 Tickets – Secure Your Spot at the Software Conference Get your Build Stuff 2025 tickets now! Join top software engineers, architects, and tech visionaries in Vilnius, Lithuania (Dec 3-5, 2025) for hands-on workshops, cutting-edge talks, and game-changing...

There's a very strong line up for what is always a great conference.

📅 December 3-5, 2025 | Vilnius, Lithuania
🎟 Use my promo code 2025SPEAKER_15 for 15% off tickets
🔗 buildstuff.events?sca_ref=9646...

#buildstuffconf

I'm excited to be speaking at Build Stuff in Vilnius this December!

"Digital Cat & Mouse: Strategies to Outsmart Phishers, Scrapers, and Thieves" covers the (mis-)adventures that taught me how to protect digital assets in the wild (selling 10 Downing St, moving the Eiffel Tower to Dublin, and more)

Redirecting Test Emails Safely in Laravel A small Laravel feature that prevents a big headache: how Mail::alwaysTo() keeps staging and demo environments from accidentally emailing real users.

🔗 www.conroyp.com/articles/red...

#laravel #php #webdev

We've all done it - testing on staging, click send… suddenly a real user replies to your test email.

Laravel has a one-line feature that prevents that from ever happening again: Mail::alwaysTo()

It quietly redirects every outgoing email to a single, safe inbox.

Tiny feature. Big sigh of relief!