I was watching a reel on Instagram from Martin Lewis (for the non UK lot – a very trustworthy financial journalist, campaigner and consumer rights activist). I’ve attached it below but it’s about one of his biggest gripes – online scam advertisments.
Away from his message (which I 100% support), I picked up on something that I found interesting – he calls non-social media “The Legitimate Web”.
I don’t know if it’s deliberate, but given the state of the internet and how things work, I like that phrase. Obviously, people can set up a blog or a forum and scam folks, but on the whole it’s a lot harder without the machines of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or YouTube behind you. Set something up, pump out ads, try to catch some poor unsuspecting granny to scam out of their life savings.
With a bit of work, you seem a bit more legitimate. You create your own vision to present, and invite people in – be it a blog or (in my case) professional WordPress development. It shows you are who you say you are, and therefore probably going to be around a lot more.
So this is a bit of a regular feature – I’m going to share piece of tech that I’ve been enjoying that doesn’t suck. Because let’s be honest, technology sucks. Here’s something that’s good, fun, and doesn’t take the piss with their terms & conditions.
Late last year I’ve stuck in a new system in my house – the Evercade Alpha. I’ve always wanted an arcade machine in my house, and – whilst not an original – this in the office will do. It feels incredibly well made, and I’m able to pull off dragon punches and fireballs easily. But it’s also compatible with Evercade’s vast library of games of games, meaning within about 5 minutes of setting up I was playing Metal Slug 3 again, and once I died I switched to Bubble Bobble. Although I’ve focussed more on the arcade side of things, it also allows playing of non arcade games in Evercade’s library. Roguecraft DX – an Amiga title – works awfully well. Xeno Crisis is a Smash TV esque game that is an indie darling and my god it’s just as intense. I’ve also enjoyed Donut Dodo and Murtop using a control system that absolutely shows how it should be played.
Why Evercade Matters
Now you may ask “Why would you play Evercade when there’s an endless library of games that can be downloaded and emulated?”, but think of it like a vinyl collection. Not every game is a banger on these £20 cartridges, but you can feel the love in these curated quality products. With each game you you are able to spend more time with them because there isn’t as big a paralysis of choice. Each game has a manual (and – therefore – a new manual smell), which serves as a great introduction to the game. You often also get stickers or posters too.
WindjammersStreet Fighter 2Donut Dodo
And that’s why, by being a curated platform, the paralysis of choice isn’t there. Instead you pick up a few games, and are forced to play those games, as a few more games cost £20. I sat and played through the entire Creatures II a few years back, and also discovered the excellent The Curse of Illmoore Bay recently, which is “What happens if Mega Man came out on the Mega Drive and also had Zombies Ate My Neighbours Aesthethic?”. You’ll find your new favourite game with Evercade.
In it, it defined it’s legacy. For in a hundred years time on Bargain Hunt people will be selling Evercade cartridges, and David Dickinson’s great grandson will wax lyrical about the history of Boogerman on the Interplay Collection 1, due to it being discovered for £15 in a car boot in Hitchin. Will people be doing that with Sony’s latest AAA adventure? Or even GTA6? Well they can’t, can they. Download codes that are lost to the wind. A string of numbers, that offer nothing.
Speaking of legacy, only slightly frustrating thing is that due to licencing games can become “legacy” meaning they are removed from sale, but you’ve enough time (usually 2-3 months) to pick it up before it does. Which is fine, but it means I missed the cartridge that contained Sensible Soccer and a fair few Dizzy Games.
There is no real DLC (in fact you can get free and hidden games on a rotation), and everything just works. I love it. I wasn’t convinced at the start with Evercade, but I’m a total convert now.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, Guile is being an utter bastard and he needs a dragon punch to the face.
I rarely talk about politics here. Not real reason – I believe we should talk more about politics and how things affect us: a blanket “no politics” rule kills a safe space for marginalised communities, but for whatever reason I feel like the permanent nature of blogs and the temporary nature of public opinion means it may bite you in the bum at a later date1.
Nevertheless – I do wear my political opinions on my sleeve (which is ally, left wing and think that Brexit is the stupidest thing we have done as a nation), and I was happy waking up to read Andy Burnham – the mayor of Manchester – won the Makerfield by election and therefore has a definitive path to become prime minister.
There has been genuine change in Manchester: the busses are now yellow to match the trams and have clear branding promoting £2 bus fares, and homelessness is at the very least a lot less visible and at most almost eradicated. The city has transformed over the past 10 years, and Andy Burnham spearheaded it. Between that, the work he did for the Hillsborough Justice Campaign and how visible he was during COVID and in the aftermath of the Ariana Grande concert bombing, he feels like a genuine change and a genuine bloke.
I was worried about this election. To drive from mine to my partner’s house drives straight through Makerfield, and the last few weeks I’ve seen so many Reform signs out. I saw one Restore sign, and about 3 Vote Andy placards. Sunday I was tailing a Reform bus in the off teal colours for about a mile on Sunday, and I felt like it was inevitable for a shock. A lot of the places I drive through is one of those places that have England flags everywhere, and not just for the World Cup.
I’m sympathetic to the resident’s plight – as I live in a similar area that has been forgotten, and people are crying out for change. It’s just depressing that the void in these places has been taken advantage by racist populists, who believe the country is full, taxes are too high and anybody who doesn’t scale a lampost to hang a Union Jack is unpatriotic. Last night felt like a bit of genuine hope.
I’d never vote for Reform or any far right party (or indeed center right at the moment), and their candidate seemed like the sort of person I wouldn’t get on with. For them to be licking their wounds after being told resoundly to go fuck themselves made me smile.
Anyway, good luck Andy, hopefully you are the change that people desperately need.
I had a football blog once where I praised an individual for a classy gesture, who later turned out to be a wrongun. ↩︎
So I have a few sites with SiteGround. They’re largely sites that don’t get a huge amount of traffic (with the exception of All Rumble Stats, which gets 20k a month). Hosting is a bit like your bank account or your broadband provider: they are there and as long as you don’t do much to annoy them, then you stick with them. Friction of moving is painful, so you want to avoid it. Nevertheless, they were a pretty good host a while back that didn’t seem to do anything egregious compared to other hosts, plus I’ve been to their EU offices, so I have recommended them in the past.
There have been a few things that have occurred in the past few years that is has me questioning continuing hosting with them. One was their speed optimiser plugin (which I think were great) deleted all WebP images, even those that the plugin didn’t create, and their support which is an AI Slopstacle Course at the moment.
Last week though I think means I’ll be moving off their servers when I renew.
WordPress 7.0 and the AI Connector Module
WordPress 7.0 came out recently, and as part of that introduced the AI Connector module, which whilst does nothing off the bat, allows you to store your chosen planet boiler key of choice within WordPress, allowing other plugins to use it for their means. It means you don’t have to add your API key to all plugins, instead just doing it once within the WordPress backend. Convenient.
I’m not a huge fan of it for a number of reasons. Firstly, as raised by Oliver Sild over on Twitter (sorry) every WordPress site could have an API key embedded in it, allowing hackers access to API tokens to do nefarious things. It feels like at the very least there’s a massive target on every that is built on WordPress’ back.
SiteGround crystalised the other reason. In that hosts will set this feature up for you, even if you don’t want them to.
I got an email a few weeks back. I’ve copied it verbatim below:-
Hi Rhys,
One of the most significant WordPress releases in years is coming, anticipated on May 20, 2026. This new version will provide a standardized way to connect your WordPress site to AI providers providers (learn more), making it possible to integrate a whole new range of AI capabilities for managing and editing your website. Once it rolls out we’ll update your WordPress site automatically. On top of that, we’ll connect it with SiteGround AI Studio so that you can start using AI capabilities right out of the box.
Sites to be automatically updated to WordPress 7.0
As always, we’ll automatically update all WordPress installations on our platform to 7.0 based on your WordPress autoupdate settings. By default, we apply major updates with 24 hour’s notice, so no action is needed on your end. The update itself is just the beginning. We’ve also taken several steps to make sure that you can take advantage of the new AI capabilities without any additional configuration.
AI Studio with 20,000 free tokens to be enabled as your default AI connector
When WordPress 7.0 lands, the standard process to start using AI capabilities will involve a few steps. First, connecting an AI provider of choice by installing a connector and providing an API key. Second, then installing the native WordPress AI plugin so AI capabilities appear in the WordPress core.
SiteGround customers, however, skip all of that entirely. With the new WordPress version, you’ll get SiteGround AI Studio activated as your default AI connector, plus our powerful AI WordPress Agent enabled automatically. This allows you to immediately use AI power for managing your WordPress. No API keys, manual connections, or extra plugins needed. You’re ready to use AI-powered features right away, backed by 20,000 free tokens available to you every month through AI Studio.
Powerful AI Agent for WordPress management to be activated
As part of the WordPress 7.0 update, SiteGround’s AI Agent will appear directly in your WordPress admin ready to help with all sorts of tasks. The moment WordPress 7.0 is live on your site, you’ll have our robust AI chat assistant available directly from your admin dashboard.
SiteGround’s AI Agent capabilities go far beyond the standard image and text generation many other AI plugins provide. It can handle real maintenance tasks: updating site settings and plugins, setting product discounts, editing descriptions, auditing and applying SEO changes, and more, all from a single prompt.
Note: Please note that the custom AI Studio connection and the AI Agent activation will not be done as part of the WordPress update for those websites that have a white-label client added to them. If you want, you can activate SiteGround AI agent yourself on such sites.
Also good to know: You can also change your default AI connector or completely disable the AI Studio connector any time you want.
Cheers to the exciting new WordPress version, The SiteGround Team
I didn’t think much of it, but given it was sent midday on a Friday, I kind of skim read it and ignored it. Sure enough though after WordPress 7.0 launched on the 20th, with sites hosted on SiteGround, this appeared.
Notice it’s location right at the bottom. Often plugins are guilty of fighting for the real estate at the top of the page. This? Already activated and hidden away. In a vain hope you don’t notice it.
Not only it’s activated, but it’s connected to their AI agent.
I’m an experienced user, and kind of go blind to the banners and things that appear in the back end of WordPress, but I wonder how quick I would burn through the 20,000 tokens every month? Would that change? Is this just an approach to get SiteGround users hooked onto an AI chatbot and then reduce the level of service? How much does it cost per month if you go over the 20,000 tokens?
Thing is, this is not a free service. I pay over £500 every year to SiteGround to host my websites, and many of my clients pay as well. Things like this should be an opt-in service. If this was a free service, I’d grin and bare it – after all you are the product. But it’s not. In short, SiteGround has left and icky taste in a lot of folks mouths. Not everybody will leave, but many might.
But then, this is the modus operandi for the great AI rollout. Switch it on and hope people don’t notice or kick up a fuss. Enough people don’t mind it and a few people use it. Big numbers, 1+ million adoption, board is happy. It just feels icky and deceptive. I do wonder if AI adoption would be bigger overall if it wasn’t forced down our throats, and the benefits to society would be welcomed if they were argued or shown.
But then again, if AI operators have to go down this approach, is there any benefits to be had at all?
Over the Easter weekend I was taking a stroll down the Rhos-on-Sea promenade, and noticed the following community noticeboard promoting local events. I stopped, took a photo, and went on my merry way.
Of the posters, I can confidently say that there is a Betws-Y-Coed antique and vintage fair held regularly thoroughout the year (which is the top left hand poster) and a Llandudno transport festival (whch is the bottom centre poster).
The rest? not a scoobies off the top of my head.
Sure, do I remember the dates of these events? No. But I remember from the time it took me to take the photos those events exist. If I was interested in either event, or know somebody who would, I could find out details and plan from there.
People use AI to scaffold websites, do art, or write blog posts. These feel like they fill a gap, rather than serve a purpose – a checkbox on a task list that needs to be filled.
However, in today’s attention based economy, why would you want your stuff to look the same? Janky websites with unique designs are more fun than every AI generated site out there, and whilst your kids art isn’t Rembrandt, you still hang it on the fridge, don’t you?
It’s been nice seeing other talented folk raise this, and the backlash has begun. I’ve even begun to switch off reading some prolific bloggers that use AI for the feature images. Even if they wrote every word, I think the images show a lack of creativity. So if you can’t guarantee that the featured image is slop, why should I trust your text?
So open up VS Code, or Canva and build that bloody poster, logo, or website. It may not be as polished as what ChatGPT can do, but you can maybe stick around in another person’s head longer than any slop can.
