Yoko Demo Site

Little things really do make a difference

The big things make a difference too. I’m hoping to do both. This site is a demonstration of some of what I’ve learned digging into the Full Site Editor, creating a custom block theme, and creating a plugin supplying several of the blocks you see throughout the site.

Learning through experimentation

This has been a fun adventure back into the WordPress world. Because I wanted to learn as much as I could with the limited time I had to dedicate to this project, I employed differing approaches throughout the code.

Some things not included

Although not a complete demonstration of every WordPress feature, hopefully this site adequately demonstrates my ability to use the platform to meet client needs.

There are custom templates – the curved edge sidebar post, the home page, the 404 page – to highlight my understanding of the platform. There are custom patterns, synced and unsynced, and, of course, the custom theme, plugin, and blocks.

All that said, if this were a true production site, I would have done a lot more. I would have done things like include a search option, make templates for single posts, pages, archives, make a custom navigation option, etc., etc.

General notes/observations

Open, realistic assessments and critical evaluation are crucial to growth

Some observations:

• This is not a production-ready site. It is fun, but it is not a production-ready site. It’s been a bit challenging to be okay with presenting it as-is.
• Code inconsistencies. My goal was to learn through experimentation and I feel that I accomplished that. Along the way, I decided to try doing things in different ways to get a better feel for how everything works together. There are some places I’m sure I didn’t employ best practices. I would love feedback on that.
• Some parts of the code are more heavily commented than others. I try to make my code reasonably clear and comment throughout. Sometimes when I’m experimenting or working on a proof of concept, I do not comment as heavily. For work, I always try to consider what the next developer is going to encounter and comment accordingly. And, of course, I’m glad to follow any established standards.
• I ended up using more specifically targeted custom scss than I thought I would. It was easy to implement both in the plugin blocks and the theme, but I do not know if I veered too far away from best practice. I’ll be interested to learn more about best practices for styling in the Block and Block Theme world.
• “Magic Numbers”. I have mixed feelings about them. I’ve left some and I’ve used constants for others. As with everything, I’m amenable to following any standard.
• Substandard Navigation Menu. If this were a production site, I would customize the navigation menu to make it more visually interesting and user friendly. Or, if provided, I would faithfully recreate the Designer’s intentions.
• There is no example in this site of fetching data from an external api. I would need to brush up on that for php, but in node world, I do that regularly. I’m also pretty comfortable building node/express apis.
• Boilerplate code. Both the Create Block Theme plugin and and using npx @wordpress/create-block started the project with a good bit of boilerplate code and comments. Having those frameworks to start was helpful. I removed some, but not all of the comments.

Your feedback is welcomed, invited, and appreciated

I’ve attempted to demonstrate that I’m competent with complexity and can produce a site. Hopefully that shows. There is always opportunity for improvement and I’m always interested in and open to suggestions, guidance, criticism, and growth.

If you are inclined and have the time, I would be grateful to know your impressions. I’m already in contact with Sarah, but am glad to communicate with anyone. Please feel free to contact me on through my LinkedIn. I’m open to sharing my code through GitHub.

Wrapping it up

Yoko  Consulting looks like a pretty great company with pretty great clients. I want to be a part of doing good things for companies and organizations that do good things. I already try to do that on a small scale where I can, but would love to do it on a larger scale.

I am a good developer. I’ve also been an Executive Director of a non-profit and currently provide a website with hosting and development for Secret Squirrel Wildlife Rehabilitation. In addition to my background and technical skills, part of my value to Yoko would be my willingness and ability to accept and apply criticism, feedback, and guidance and to be an encouraging and supportive presence.

I’m looking forward to finding out where all of this leads. Cheers!