Notes from July
Security scanning; block-based themes and building Gutenberg blocks in WordPress 🧱 Launching the Architecture Lobby website 🏢 Debugging a Django app using the Shopify Python API 🛒
Photo by Glen Carrie on Unsplash
What I’ve been working on
This month I’ve made a staging environment for my new personal website on Netlify and put the first (very basic) version of the site live. I’ve been impressed at how quickly I was able to transfer across much of the existing content from Gatsby and how nice Eleventy is to use. At Common Knowledge I’ve been improving the new Architecture Lobby site’s visual fidelity to its Figma design and removing redundant code ahead of its launch. I also pair programmed with a colleague to debug an issue with syncing products to a Django app using the Shopify Python API. This involved thinking about Python data types; checking that the API was returning valid JSON and running migrations to update the Postgres database.
What I’ve been learning
This month I’ve been learning how to:
- audit a WordPress site for security issues using the WP-CLI Vulnerability Scanner package
- understand and use the different parts of block-based WordPress themes such as templates, template-parts and patterns
- use the Convert to Blocks plugin to convert classic WordPress editor content to Gutenberg blocks
- create custom Gutenberg blocks with React with the @wordpress/create-block tool
- configure Global settings and styles for the WordPress Full Site Editor in the theme.json file
What’s next
In August I’m going to be creating a workflow for handling WordPress multisite installations with Bedrock. I’m also expecting to start work on a new website for a project called Solidarity Knows No Borders which is part of the Migrants Organise Campaign Group. I’ve already done some technical discovery for this project including research on how to implement a map that displays locations of local groups within the organisation. I’m planning to add some styling to the blog page on my new personal site. I would like to spend some time thinking about the structure behind my approach to the WordPress Full Site Editor and what is appropriate to put in templates versus page content or patterns.
Interesting links
These are some interesting links that I’ve come across this month:
- https://fullsiteediting.com/ is a comprehensive tutorial for the WordPress Full Site Editor and writing block-based themes
- https://devdocs.io/ combines multiple API documentations in a fast, organised, and searchable interface
- Kara Luton, engineer at CrowdStrike has a guide to perfecting pull requests
- Git Command Explorer helps you find the commands you need without Googling
- A detailed explanation of how to create a fluid type scale from the creator of Fluid Type Scale Calculator, Aleksandr Hovhannisyan (source)