blog
Musings on WordPress, Motorcycling, and Life
-
Nine things I fixed in Pattern Manager 0.4.0
Pattern Manager is a WordPress plugin from WP Engine for building and managing block pattern PHP files. I picked it up for a personal project, immediately ran into a wall of bugs and missing functionality, and ended up spending more time patching it than I’d budgeted. Here’s what was broken and what Claude Code and…
-
Stop Rebuilding WordPress Block Patterns From Scratch — Use Block Zapper
Predefined block patterns are supposed to save time — but not when they’re loaded with custom attributes you’d spend forever clearing out. Block Zapper fixes that, giving you surgical control over what gets zapped and what stays. Just make sure you sandbox it first.
-
Happy TRON Day
Coinciding with the release of TRON: Ares, I’ve decided to give TomFinley.com a refresh, with its own Halloween costume inspired by the aesthetic of the movie. I’ve also updated my signature “TF” ligature-logo to be more balanced and clean as well as serve as a reference the TRON lightcycle trails. Foundation TomFinley.com is built as…
-
Embracing WordPress Block (Gutenberg) Full-Site Themes: Why Child Themes are Essential for Hobbyists and Developers
Full-Site WordPress child themes are not just a recommendation—they are a necessity—providing the portability, resiliency, and safety needed to ensure that your website remains robust, maintainable, and future-proof.
-
-
WordPress Tooling and Process Learning
Brian Coords asked a great question on Xwitter this morning about tutorials and resources for learning the tooling and processes behind modern WordPress development, such as Node.js, NPM, and Git. One of the trickier aspects of modern WordPress development, especially with the advent of blocks, is that it goes far beyond HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and…
