# Murat Çorlu
> Web Development, Ghost and running Synaps Media
Public Ghost content for AI and LLM tooling. This file includes a bounded export of public pages first, then recent public posts.
Append `.md` to any post or page URL to get the content in Markdown (for example, `/example-post.md`).
## Pages
### Murat Çorlu
URL: https://muratcorlu.com/about/
Last updated: 2025-12-10T12:03:37.000Z
I was born and raised in Sakarya, a city near Istanbul, Türkiye. My journey with computers began at the age of thirteen, in 1995, when I first encountered one at my cousin’s house. It was love at first sight. After my persistent requests, my father bought me a second-hand Commodore Amiga 500, as it was affordable. Initially, I spent months playing games, fascinated by how everything worked, until I met an older friend who owned a Commodore 64\. He was doing something magical: coding. I asked, “Please teach me how to write that,” referring to the hangman game code he showed me. This moment introduced me to QBasic.
For two years, I tinkered with QBasic, experimenting and learning. Later, my father bought me a PC, a Pentium 166\. At a bookstore, I discovered a thick book titled “Visual Basic.” The word “Basic” in the title intrigued me, and I started reading it, realizing I could learn this too.
I developed many Windows applications for personal use, like a batch file renamer (to organize my MP3s), a birthday reminder, and a digital version of my high school graduation yearbook in 2000.
In 1998, internet cafes were popular in my town, and one was owned by someone I knew. During a visit, I noticed he was manually tracking customer usage times and charges, using stickers and calculations. I suggested, “An application would help you manage this,” to which he replied, “If you make one, it would definitely help.” I spent the next two nights coding and created a basic application for him. He was thrilled and immediately adopted it, rewarding me with free access to the café. This was the first time I realized coding could help people and even bring in some earnings.
With the internet’s rise, I expanded my programming knowledge, eventually shifting to web development. Excited by the idea of creating something that could reach anyone worldwide, I learned ASP, then ASP.NET, PHP, and Linux. I continued to make digital yearbooks (using Adobe Director) until 2006\. After university, I started my professional programming career at small companies, progressing step by step to roles in Türkiye’s top internet firms.
Now, in my 40s, I’m still learning daily and constantly exploring new projects and ideas. I’m passionate about creating useful things through programming, the best tool I have.
So, I’m Murat Çorlu, a software developer based in The Netherlands. This blog is about my work. I also write a [Turkish blog](https://muratcorlu.net/?ref=muratcorlu.com) and micro-blog on [Fediverse](https://muratcorlu.com/notes/) and [Bluesky](https://bsky.app/profile/muratcorlu.com?ref=muratcorlu.com).
### Blogroll
URL: https://muratcorlu.com/blogroll/
Last updated: 2026-05-08T17:50:10.000Z
Here a list of blogs that I follow and find very helpful about web development.
Show all recommendations
[A Beautiful SiteA blog about everything web. Est. 2007](https://www.abeautifulsite.net/?ref=muratcorlu.com)
Creator of Shoelace. Articles about Design Systems and Web Components
[Adactio: Jeremy KeithPublications and presentations from web developer and author, Jeremy Keith.adactioJeremy Keith](https://adactio.com/articles?ref=muratcorlu.com)
[Brad FrostDesign Systems Consulting, Web Development, Workshops, and MusicBrad Frost](https://bradfrost.com/blog/?ref=muratcorlu.com)
[Home - Ahmad ShadeedAhmad Shadeed BlogiShadeed](https://ishadeed.com/?ref=muratcorlu.com)
Very good, detailed articles about CSS
[Chen Hui JingThe chronicles of a self-taught designer and developer.HomeChen Hui JingThe chronicles of a self-taught designer and developer.](https://chenhuijing.com/?ref=muratcorlu.com#%F0%9F%96%8C)
Another CSS focused great blog
[Blog– The personal website of Sara Soueidan, inclusive design engineer](https://www.sarasoueidan.com/blog/?ref=muratcorlu.com)
[Josh W ComeauFriendly tutorials for developers. Focus on React, CSS, Animation, and more!](https://www.joshwcomeau.com/?ref=muratcorlu.com)
[Max BöckMax Böck is a professional front-end developer based in Vienna, Austria.Max BöckMax Böck](https://mxb.dev/?ref=muratcorlu.com)
A front-end focused blog that is pure art
[Aleksandr HovhannisyanDev tutorials, thoughts on software development, and the occasional off-topic post.Aleksandr HovhannisyanAleksandr Hovhannisyan](https://www.aleksandrhovhannisyan.com/?ref=muratcorlu.com)
[Kilian ValkhofFront-end & user experience developerKilian Valkhof | Front-end & user experience developer](https://kilianvalkhof.com/?ref=muratcorlu.com)
### Tools
URL: https://muratcorlu.com/tools/
Last updated: 2025-09-26T21:55:45.000Z
I like tiny tools and services, those make one job and do it perfectly. I wanted to take list of them on my site.
Most of them are free tools. Some links contain my referral codes. I'll update this post in time.
## Design
[SquooshSquoosh is the ultimate image optimizer that allows you to compress and compare images with different codecs in your browser.Squoosh](https://squoosh.app/?ref=muratcorlu.com)
A great offline web app to optimize images easily
[SVG Icon Libraries and Custom Icon Font Organizer ❍ IcoMoonEasily mange your icons and integrate them in your projects. Browse free icons or import your own SVG icons to export as icon font, SVG, PNG, sprite and more.](https://icomoon.io/?ref=muratcorlu.com)
Great online tool to create custom font file with SVG files
[Excalidraw — Collaborative whiteboarding made easyExcalidraw is a virtual collaborative whiteboard tool that lets you easily sketch diagrams that have a hand-drawn feel to them.Excalidraw](https://excalidraw.com/?ref=muratcorlu.com)
Simple yet powerful, free web based whiteboard tool
## Monitoring
[Pushover: Simple Notifications for Android, iPhone, iPad, and Desktop](https://pushover.net/?ref=muratcorlu.com)
I Pushover for years for many of my projects. Great service
[Beszel | Simple, lightweight server monitoringLightweight server monitoring with historical data, Docker stats, and alerts.Beszel](https://beszel.dev/?ref=muratcorlu.com)
It's easy to use and quite powerful
## Network
[HTTPie CLI: HTTP & API testing clientJSON, syntax highlighting, sessions, wget-like downloads, plugins, and more.HTTPie CLI: HTTP & API testing client](https://httpie.io/cli?ref=muratcorlu.com)
It's way more intuitive then curl. Great for testing HTTP endpoints from terminal. You can combine with [jq](https://jqlang.org/?ref=muratcorlu.com)
[DNS Propagation Checker - Global DNS Checker ToolInstant DNS Propagation Check. Global DNS Propagation Checker - Check DNS records around the world.Global DNS Testing Tool](https://www.whatsmydns.net/?ref=muratcorlu.com)
For testing to check if a DNS change updated worldwide
[Measure TTFB from 40 Locations - SpeedVitalsPerform TTFB (Time to First Byte) Test on your Website from 40 Locations Worldwide and find out how fast is your website.SpeedVitals](https://speedvitals.com/ttfb-test?ref=muratcorlu.com)
TTFB is a good indicator about your site's performance. This tool allows you to test it worldwide
[intoDNS: checks DNS and mail servers healthintoDNS checks the health and configuration of DNS and mail servers.Elvsoft](https://intodns.com/?ref=muratcorlu.com)
It's an old service but still working well. Good for checking your DNS server setup
[IPRoyal | Premium Quality Proxies, Unbeatable PricesGet a proxy service provider without contracts, non-expiring traffic, and easy self-service.IPRoyal.com](https://iproyal.com/?r=918853&ref=muratcorlu.com)
Great tool to check your endpoints with the requests from -nearly- every countries
[Newsletters spam test by mail-tester.commail-tester.com is a free online service that allows you to test your emails for Spam, Malformed Content and Mail Server Configuration problems](https://www.mail-tester.com/?ref=muratcorlu.com)
Test your mail settings to prevent going spam folder
[badssl.com](https://badssl.com/?ref=muratcorlu.com)
A list of HTTP endpoints to test your HTTP client against all type of SSL issues
## Data Storage
[PocketBase - Open Source backend in 1 fileOpen Source backend in 1 file with realtime database, authentication, file storage and admin dashboardPocketBase v0.28.4](https://pocketbase.io/?ref=muratcorlu.com)
A simple and very flexible database. Can be great fit for panel-like projects
## Development Tools
[Webhook.site - Test, transform and automate Web requests and emailsInstantly generate a free, unique URL and email address to test, inspect, and automate (with a visual workflow editor and scripts) incoming HTTP requests and emailsWebhook.site](https://webhook.site/?ref=muratcorlu.com)
This free service creates random endpoints for you that you can test webhooks
### Notes
URL: https://muratcorlu.com/notes/
Last updated: 2025-12-20T19:38:17.000Z
To follow me on fediverse (like Mastodon) search for `@murat@muratcorlu.com` on your platform. Here is the latest notes that I posted.
Want to add something like to your Ghost site? [I have an article](https://muratcorlu.com/adding-ghost-social-web-notes-to-your-website-2/) for this.
### Contact
URL: https://muratcorlu.com/contact/
Last updated: 2026-01-27T23:48:00.000Z
If you need to reach me, you can use this form.
## Posts
### Using inline partials in Ghost Themes
URL: https://muratcorlu.com/using-inline-partials-in-ghost-themes/
Last updated: 2026-07-02T20:10:27.000Z
Another thing I learned while working on Synaps Media landing page. First let me tell the need:
[My designer](https://www.enes.design/?ref=muratcorlu.com) delivered me some reusable section UIs. When you have repeating components, it's a well known practice to use parametric Handlebars partials, and reuse them in multiple places with different values. Testimonials bubbles in our landing page is a good example.
```handlebars
{{quote}}
{{#if avatar}}
{{/if}}
{{name}}
{{handle}}
```
And in a place that I want to show a testimonial bubble, I use it like below:
```handlebars
{{> "testimonial"
quote="Some comments"
avatar="https://...."
name="John Doe"
handle="john.doe"
}}
```
This is nice for simple use cases. But I had a section with a slider that I'll highlight some features. And in some cases you might want to pass large HTML content for some targets. To achieve this, in our partials we need to use "[inline partials](https://handlebarsjs.com/guide/partials.html?ref=muratcorlu.com#inline-partials)".
```handlebars
```
`{{#> features}}` part, create an inline partial with a default value inside. And here how we use it:
```handlebars
{{#> "section-feature-slide"}}
{{#*inline "heading"}}Built for modern publishers{{/inline}}
{{#*inline "description"}}Slide through the features that make Synaps Media the privacy-first analytics platform you actually enjoy using.{{/inline}}
{{#*inline "features"}}
Real-time analytics
Watch visits land as they happen, with zero cookies and no consent banners.
Invisible traffic
Bots, RSS readers and email clients that client-side tracking always misses.
....
{{/inline}}
{{/ "section-feature-slide"}}
```
Similar to regular partials, with `{{#> "section-feature-slide"}}` syntax, we say "I want this partial here". But this time we are able to give partial block contents inside. `{{#*inline "features"}}` says "put this content inside "features" block in our partial.
That's very handy. Very similar to how "[slots](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Reference/Elements/slot?ref=muratcorlu.com)" work on web components. Even though syntax is not very intuitive, it does the job.
### Using contentFor helper in Ghost Themes
URL: https://muratcorlu.com/using-contentfor-helper-in-ghost-themes/
Last updated: 2026-07-02T18:13:56.000Z
While working on new landing page of Synaps Media, I used a lot of inline CSS code. My intention was keeping section partials self-contained, like a component. So a basic section partial was something like:
```handlebars
...
```
This worked well. At the end I had the only styles that is really needed inside the document. With [Smart Optimization](https://www.synapsmedia.com/changelog/introducing-smart-optimization/?ref=muratcorlu.com) built-in to Synaps Media, these styles were also minified automatically, so not worried about waste of resource. I know ideally it's better to keep styles in external CSS files, but because of the network latency, I didn't want to fined by [Page Speed](https://pagespeed.web.dev/?ref=muratcorlu.com) for this.
But another side effect was having many `style` tags inside `body`. Practically this is not a big issue as well. But I saw some warnings about this in HTML validators. If you care standards, `style` tag is not allowed inside `body` even though all modern browsers render it very well. I wanted to take my chance to pass this rule. But if I move all styles to `head` (or a separate file), then I would lose that some of my current achievements: I'll serve some unneeded styles for current page and I'll lose those self-contained handlebars templates.
I used to use [Django Framework](https://www.djangoproject.com/?ref=muratcorlu.com) in the past. Django templates (jinja) also uses inheritance and you were able to inherit multiple levels of templates and fill blocks on upper level templates in extended templates. Would it be possible to have the similar in Handlebars?
I’ve learned that, at the point I’ve reached, this is possible with the help of [contentFor](https://docs.ghost.org/themes/helpers/utility/block?ref=muratcorlu.com). In my `default.hbs` file, I created a `head` block:
```handlebars
...
{{{block "head"}}}
{{{body}}}