Website Optimization Measures, Part XXXVII

Published on Apr 30, 2026, filed under development, optimization. (Share this post, e.g., on Mastodon or on Bluesky.)

Welcome to edition 37 of that blog series in which I share improvements and lessons from the work on my projects—so that you can most pickily choose what could benefit yours:

Making the United States singular. For the longest time, I referred to the United States of America using the plural—“the United States are…”. It didn’t take the next war but some spellcheckers to realize that the plural was correct in the past, but that the US is usually referred to using the singular. Well. Okay.
Implementing ::target-text. After what may have been years of waiting and bumping up reminders, it was finally time to implement ::target-text, to style text targeted by URL fragments. I kept it simple and grouped it with ::selection.
Doing some design tweakery. Allow me this mundane entry: I tweaked the designs of my sites here and there; more on the side of IA Defensa, which I had launched in February, less so on the side of meiert.com. I’m calling it out because this is such an evergreen maintenance task, it’s easy not to mention it!
Refactoring error variables. When spotting inconsistencies in catch blocks where each of e, err, and error were used to signify errors, I went through all projects to move to use err. I’m not entirely happy yet given other inconsistencies (sometimes using abbreviated and sometimes using full forms), but at least that inconsistency was thus removed.
Blocking Claude Code from reading .env (and other) files. Jad Joubran (hello 👋) shared sound advice with what it says on his blog: Prevent Claude Code from accessing .env. Taking note to do this with other LLMs and waiting for the day when I’m off Claude Code (I’m moving away from as many US products as possible), I heeded his advice and believe you want to err on the side of caution, too.
Learning more about the English subjunctive—and making the necessary changes. I wish I were a native English speaker—but it still shows that I’m not. I did eventually notice that I made mistakes with the past subjunctive, something that prompted me to read up on the rules, and search for occurrences to fix.
Tightening dependency manager configurations. I had been monitoring the development around minimum release age for a bit, was already using Depfu’s “reasonably up-to-date” setting, but needed the Axios disaster (an HTTP client I never used, however) to also tighten Dependabot’s settings. That is, since last year, Dependabot comes with a configurable “cooldown” parameter that governs how old packages need to be before being pulled up. It looks like this, just using the default-days option:
```
updates:
  - package-ecosystem: "npm"
    directory: "/"
    schedule:
      interval: "monthly"
    cooldown:
      default-days: 7
```
Performing some spring-cleaning. Yes 😉 I’m using this activity, too, to remind of the importance and usefulness of regular site tweaks and edits—updating the graphic here, adjusting the wording there, improving that thing over there.

This is a part of an open article series. Check out some of the other optimization posts!

About Me

I’m Jens (long: Jens Oliver Meiert), and I’m an engineering lead, guerrilla philosopher, and indie publisher. I’ve worked as a technical lead and engineering manager for companies you use every day (like Google) and companies you’ve never heard of, I’m an occasional contributor to web standards (like HTML, CSS, WCAG), and I write and review books for O’Reilly and Frontend Dogma.

I love trying things, not only in web development and engineering management, but also with respect to politics and philosophy. Here on meiert.com I talk about some of my experiences and perspectives. (Please share feedback: Interpret charitably, but do be critical.)