wordpress

  • WP-CLI in the failover runbook

    A failover procedure with three WP-CLI steps, and the one that has to run before the database is writable. Three commands and an ordering constraint that is not…

  • Block bindings for a field that used to be a shortcode

    A shortcode from 2016 rendering a meta field, replaced by a binding on a core paragraph. The meta key must be registered with show_in_rest and a sanitisation callback…

  • Editors changing things, measured over three years

    A count of content and design changes made without a developer, before and after the site editor migration. Forty-one tickets a year becoming two is the return on…

  • The two PHP templates that survived, and the rule

    Two templates that cannot become block templates, and the rule that identifies them. Three years and the rule has held for every template that came up, which is…

  • A functions.php of forty lines

    A file that was eight hundred lines in 2022, and what is left in it. Everything else moved to a plugin, and the test for each was whether…

  • Six block templates, four parts, seventeen patterns

    The whole theme, counted, three years after it was sixty-one PHP files. Six templates serve ninety-four per cent of traffic, which was the measurement that made the 2023…

  • A pattern that had been detached on nine pages

    A synced pattern on forty-one pages, nine of which had been detached and were now divergent copies. Detaching is one click with no confirmation and no subsequent indication,…

  • Ten years of a WordPress site, and what is left of the theme

    A theme that was 61 PHP templates in 2023 and is six block templates and a stylesheet. An audit rather than a problem.

  • An Interactivity API block, two years on

    A carousel converted from a bespoke script in 2024, revisited to see whether the conversion held. The runtime being loaded by somebody else’s plugin means the shared cost…

  • theme.json regenerated, and the check that has fired five times

    A generated file under version control, and the CI check that is the only thing keeping the generation meaningful. Five failures in four years, every one of them…