In the software industry, the definition of "success" isn't necessarily the same as it is for the rest of the world. The customer asks for a complex system composed of many parts, with a specified budget, and a timeline.
November 2012
Successful Turkeys: Redefining Success in Web Projects
Case Study
Totem Ocean
Wow, what a year. Freelock is jamming, with some very exciting new projects, and some ongoing work from existing clients. In October alone, we signed up 4 new customers, with 3 of them having sizable projects, including projects for the University of Washington and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. The first one is on the verge of launching already, and we're excited to be well into the planning on two more!
Since my last newsletter in April, Quest, Aaron, Eric, and Bob have joined the team. Our office is getting a bit cozy, so we're starting to look for a new place!
We continue to develop particular specialties in data visualization, event and conference management, CRM, and e-commerce -- if you know anybody who has a need for a custom site along these lines, we love referrals, please send them our way.
Meanwhile, I would love to hear from you. Drop me a line at john@freelock.com, and let me know how you're doing, and what technical or business challenges you face, or leave a comment on our site!
Recent Rants
🕑Aug 31, 2026 🖋John Locke
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Drupal Meets Matrix part 1: Setting up Matrix API
I've been maintaining the matrix_api module on Drupal.org since 2016, nearly a decade of it doing one thing well: posting Drupal events into a Matrix room. This year that changed.
🕑Aug 27, 2026 🖋John Locke
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WordPress Has Thousands of Maintainers. Does Your Replacement?
Last month, a critical WordPress vulnerability triggered emergency patching across the web — and reignited a familiar argument: if WordPress keeps having security problems, why not let AI build something new instead?
It’s a reasonable question.
AI has made software dramatically cheaper and faster to create. But somebody still has to understand it, patch it, test it, and keep it running eighteen months from now.
That’s the part of the “AI instead of WordPress” pitch we think is getting overlooked.
🕑Aug 01, 2026 🖋John Locke
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Zero to new Drupal site in 133 seconds
Gabor asked in Slack about how people contributing to Drupal manage multiple different Drupal versions, and different contributed module branches, when using AI agents:
🕑Jul 21, 2026 🖋John Locke
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We Patched wp2shell in 4 Hours. On a Friday Afternoon.
On July 17, WordPress shipped an emergency security release for a vulnerability chain now being called wp2shell.
🕑Jul 09, 2026 🖋John Locke
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Tempting Fate: What Happened When One of Our "Protected" Sites Got Hacked
A real client site got hacked and lost 35GB of files overnight. Here's how we diagnosed it, recovered in a few hours, and what we changed after.
🕑Jun 02, 2026 🖋John Locke
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"Argo-nizing" Our Platform for AI Development
How grouping related repos into a single parent directory made AI coding assistants significantly more useful
🕑May 28, 2026 🖋John Locke
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Every Night, Argo Watches
While your site is running, things change. A content editor tweaks a configuration setting. A security vulnerability surfaces in a dependency. A production fix gets applied directly instead of going through the normal release process.
🕑May 19, 2026 🖋John Locke
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Your Website Will Be Attacked. Here's How We Make Sure You Survive It.
The question used to be whether your website would face a serious security threat. That question has been answered. The question now is whether you'll be ready when it happens — and whether you can recover cleanly when something gets through.
🕑May 18, 2026 🖋John Locke
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The Rules Have Changed: Security in the Age of AI-Assisted Attacks
Security is getting dramatically harder and more expensive. AI is simultaneously driving an explosion in vulnerability discovery and weaponizing the exploits that follow. The question for every organization with anything online is no longer whether to invest in resilience — it's whether that investment is already in place before the next incident arrives.
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