más MAS is a new feature I’m adding to the Critical MAS blog. These will be links to things that I’m doing that are outside of this blog. In this first edition, I will catch up on the first half of 2018.

Medium

Your SEO Backlink Strategy Will Backfire With Me – I get great emails from Critical MAS readers. Unfortunately, that is not true for my coffee website. This is how I’m responding to the SEO consultants that advise a backlink strategy. After this article was posted, I got unfriended by someone I know in that industry. Seems I struck a nerve. Good.

Detecting the Country Code of your user with SiteGround and CloudFlare Caching Enabled using WordPress – Some PHP code that bloggers with a global audience might find useful.

INeedCoffee.com

Although I updated several older articles, these are the new ones I wrote.

The Lazy Person’s Guide to Making Coffee at Home

Next Generation Instant Coffee Reviews – There are at least 2 new instant coffees that are surprisingly good.

How to Store Coffee Beans (Tips and Recommendations)

Prismo Filter Upgrade For AeroPress Review and Tips

How to Make Iced Coffee With the Gabi Drip Master

Camping Showdown: Steeped Coffee vs The Bripe Coffee Pipe – This article includes the worst coffee brewing method I ever tried.

Make Cold Brew Coffee Quickly with the Gourmia Automatic Cold Brewer

Websites

CoffeeClub.app – I’m really proud of this site. It is a dashboard site that manages the 12 years of history of the Coffee Club of Seattle Meetup group. I use the Meetup API and the Yelp API for the data and Bootstrap 4 for the design. I’m adding more code on a regular basis.

LiftSlow.com – I planted a flag for a future site. (more info)

MichaelAllenSmith.com – I redesigned my portal using Bootstrap 4 cards.

CoffeeCookery.com – This is a test to see if I could spin off a recipe site dedicated to using coffee as an ingredient. So far I have not been giving the site much of my time. After I launched the site, I got a MUCH BETTER idea for a new coffee website. More on that idea later in the year.

UPDATE 2020: I ended the CoffeeCookery site about a year after it launched. It was a dumb idea. My much better idea is still viable.

UPDATE 2021: I decided not to pursue LiftSlow.

Other

Miami Herald Covers the Neil Rogers Audio Recovery Project – I was interviewed by the Miami Herald about the radio archive project I began in 2011.

No MAS!