Reading a theme before you touch it
Why the first hour on any project belongs to the templates, not the task list.
Category
Contact
Build
Themes, patterns and the scripts that put them together. 12 posts, newest first.
Posts here
12
Updated
Nov 06
Avg read
3m
Topics
22
Posts in Build
Page 1 of 2
Building a sidebar from helpers
Custom markup for every widget, and why we stopped fighting core output.
Keeping a Tailwind theme small
How a class recipe list keeps templates readable and the stylesheet tiny.
Self-hosted fonts without the regret
What changed when we stopped loading type from someone else's server.
A contact form with no plugin
REST, a honeypot and a rate limit, in about a hundred lines.
Designing the empty state
What a site looks like on its first day says a lot about its theme.
Comment forms worth keeping
Custom markup, honest labels and no surprises for logged-in users.
Menus without a walker
Printing your own markup from cached values, and the one trap to avoid.
Pagination with a featured post
The offset trick that quietly breaks your page count.