Start Here: A Reader's Map of The Wikiman Blog

So you've typed /blog and landed here. Fair enough — it's a bit like walking into a library where someone's reorganised the shelves and wandered off for a brew. This page is the map. Five minutes of reading and you'll know exactly what The Wikiman publishes, how we go about it, and where to start if you've got a specific problem nagging at you.

What this blog actually is

The Wikiman is a technology site for curious Brits — people who use phones, routers, smart meters and streaming boxes every day but don't particularly want a computer science degree to go with them. We're not a news ticker. We don't chase launch events. We write explainers that answer the question you'd ask a friend who happens to know about this stuff: is this normal, is it safe, and what should I actually do about it?

Everything here is written in plain English. If a piece needs a technical term, we define it once and then move on. There's no "simply" and no "just" in front of instructions that are anything but simple.

The three shelves

Most of the blog sits on one of three shelves, and knowing which is which saves a lot of scrolling.

Consumer Rights is where we deal with the commercial side of technology — subscriptions that won't cancel, apps that only work one way, services that quietly change their terms, and the practical steps you can take when a company makes something harder than it needs to be. If you've ever muttered "that can't be legal" at a screen, this is your section.

Home Tech covers the kit in your house: broadband, Wi-Fi that gives up at the chimney breast, smart speakers, meters, doorbells, televisions, and the mild chaos of getting a new gadget to talk to an old one. Practical, room-by-room stuff.

Privacy & Data is the "what do they know about me?" shelf. Cookies, logins, old accounts you've forgotten, data that outlives the device it came from. We're not doom-mongers — the tone here is sensible scepticism, not tinfoil hats. Most of the time the answer is a twenty-minute tidy-up, not a lifestyle change.

How we write

A few house rules, so you know what you're getting.

We don't do sponsored rankings dressed up as advice. If we ever recommend a paid product, it's because it does a job well and there's a free or cheaper way to do the same thing mentioned in the same paragraph.

We write about the UK as it is, not as a press release says it is. That means mentioning the actual regulators, the actual consumer bodies, the actual switch-off dates, and the fact that half the country's broadband problems start with a phone extension from 1998.

We date things. Technology advice goes stale, and an explainer from three years ago can be actively unhelpful if a company has changed its settings screens since. Where a page is older, we say so.

And we're neutral. We'll tell you what a tool does and where the trade-offs are. We won't tell you what to think about it.

Where to start, depending on what brought you here

If you've got a specific problem, the search box is your friend — every article is titled in the words a normal person would use, not the words a marketing department would.

If you're just browsing, the most-read pieces tend to be the ones about things you didn't know were happening: what a smart speaker keeps when it's supposedly idle, what a smart meter shares and with whom, what happens when you hand over an old phone without a proper wipe. Those are the ones people send to their parents.

If you're midway through a job — moving house, cancelling a subscription, setting up a router — start with the newest article in the relevant category. We try to keep the practical checklists at the top of each one, so you can skim the steps and come back for the reasoning later.

What we don't cover

We're not a deals site, so we won't tell you where the cheapest laptop is this week. We don't do breaking security incident reporting — that's a job for people with a newsroom and a lawyer. And we're not a support desk: we can't fix your specific router remotely, though we can usually point you at the page that will.

If you spot something wrong in an article — a setting that's moved, a link that's died, a rule that's changed — tell us. Corrections get made quietly and quickly, which is how it should be.

Bookmarking, and what's coming

The blog will keep rolling through 2026 with a mix of long explainers and short tidy-up guides. If you only do one thing, bookmark the category that matches your current headache and check back occasionally — it's a gentler way to keep up than another newsletter in your inbox.

And if you're reading this because you were looking for a home page and found a blog instead: welcome. Pick a shelf, put the kettle on, and start with whatever's been annoying you lately.