Web developer, Mom, Writer, Reader, Baker, Music lover, Chaotic neutral
Sweet Little You: Cover Reveal!
11 April 2022
Something happened this weekend. Something big. I got the final illustrations for Sweet Little You! OMG OMG OMG!! I have been working with Lisa Wee, a wonderfully talented illustrator, for the last few months and I couldn’t be happier with...
08 March 2022
Oh carousels. The last time I wrote about carousels, it was 2017 (seemingly a lifetime ago), when I shared a solution for fixing keyboard navigation in carousels. I know carousels have not magically disappeared in the last 5 years, but...
Overriding WP core: Dynamic blocks edition
07 February 2022
I was recently given the task of making the WordPress core RSS block look exactly like one of our custom blocks posts block. That custom block displays a series of news stories. RSS feeds are series of news stories, so...
The art chaos of time management
01 February 2022
Once upon a time, there was a (not exactly) young girl who decided to have a full-time tech job, solo-parent a pre-schooler, and publish a book. “I am so organized!” she exclaimed. “I can totally manage my time to get...
12 January 2022
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about my early career as a developer. Getting a CS degree was hard - harder than it needed to be. My classes were filled with C++ and (mid-1990s) Java. Those languages were neither easy...
30 December 2021
I have been meaning to write more, mostly to have some sort of creative outlet that does not involve code. Don’t get me wrong. I love coding and still have about 20 different side projects and ideas that I want...
15 December 2021
In an effort to spend more time on Twitter1, I came across a tweet with the following advice: Go to the library and read 100 books published in your category in the past five years I know I need to...
28 November 2021
Well, the text is done! After a few rounds of editing (e.g. many, many, many rounds) with both alpha readers and a proper editor, I am feeling quite good about it. I’m happy with the message. I’m happy with the...
17 November 2021
It has been a busy year! Between running after my newly-minted preschooler, excitedly settling into life as a fully remote worker, and remodeling our kitchen, you would think I would have time for little else. I thought the same. Then...
WordPress dynamic block registration, with special guest JSON!
27 October 2021
My last blog post was about WordPress theme customization with JSON. It seems only fitting that I follow that up (nearly 6 months later… yikes!) with a new post about custom block registration and, you guessed it, JSON! WordPress 5.8...
WordPress Customization: Supports and Variations and JSON. Oh my!
04 May 2021
The new WordPress editor (“Gutenberg”) has been a part of our lives for almost 2 1/2 years. Since that initial launch, WordPress has come out with so many different ways to customize block editor: theme.json, block variations, and block supports....
Creating block.json for a WordPress block
12 November 2020
I have been creating custom WordPress blocks since Gutenberg was in beta, though the vast majority are for work. But this week, I added my very first block to the WordPress block directory. (Hooray for my Color Palette!!) Anyone can...
Regularly online developer conferences: An impossible post
29 June 2020
This is a post long in the making, even before the days of our global pandemic and quarantines. In fact, I have been attempting to write this post for so long (6 weeks and counting) that I have deemed this...
The Case of the Disappearing Gutenberg
20 June 2020
Once upon a time, there was a WordPress post editor that discovered it had turned into a simple HTML editor…. (Apologies to Anne Tyler’s Back When We Were Grownups.) But in all seriousness, has this happened to you? I ask...
22 May 2020
March 23, 2020. That date, almost exactly 2 months ago, was the first day of our new normal. This new normal is me working from home full time. It is my daughter staying at home full time, no longer in...
Updating Terminus: A guide for Pantheon users
11 March 2020
If you are a developer who hosts your sites on Pantheon, I would be willing to bet that you also use Terminus. For all you Terminus users, a message like this probably looks familiar: Terminus 2.2.0 [notice] A new Terminus...
Besan Block: A long time coming
15 August 2019
A few times a year, we hold an internal event at work that we call “Serendipity Day.” We use this day, inspired by NPR, to work on projects that are somewhat work related, but have been sitting on our back...
I have a dirty little secret: I want to be a junior dev again
05 August 2019
I have been a professional developer for 20 years. Actually, I have been writing code for much, much longer than that, but I have only been getting paid for it for the last 20 years. In recent years - especially...
Featured Images, Gutenberg, and You
25 March 2019
A very common editor update that us WordPress developers make is to add options to the featured image meta box in the post editor. This is usually something like a checkbox to determine whether the featured image should be displayed...
A Very Informal Look at Gutenberg Accessibility
16 October 2018
We have been working all year to replatform our websites at work from Drupal to WordPress. We decided to go with WordPress for many reasons, one of the biggest being its admin UI. The WordPress edit screen, especially when compared...