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Accomplishments

• Launch new UCSC Web Presence, Sept. 2023
  • I was part of the team that developed and migrated the old WCMS UCSC home presence to WordPress, which launched in Late September
• UCSC WordPress Theme
  • 16 PRs successfully merged into the UCSC WordPress theme, one that is approved but not merged. Notable contributions include:
    • Corrected issues with images breaking out of their content area. (This is a noted WordPress bug 🐛.)
    • Contributed to the initial design of the single post template.
    • Returned the "Last modified" date to the footer area.
    • Styled the inline <code> element.
    • Added custom style options to the Details Block recently added to WordPress Core.
      • Added deprecation labels to the "Accordion Block" in the Gutenberg Blocks plugin
    • Added "Zoom" hover effect to all images that contain a link (<a> tag).
• UCSC Custom Functionality Plugin
  • Three PRs successfully merged into plugin, including:
    • Re-adding the "Edit site" link to logged-in admin bar.
    • Audit code to make sure it's "pluggable" in preparation for installing on the Faculty WordPress service (note, due to recent budget cuts, this project is on hold).
    • Added admin settings page under "Settings" menu in the dashboard.
• UCSC News Functionality Plugin
  • Developed the News Functionality plugin for use on the new UCSC News site to address links to external news sites.
    • Creates a custom post type called "Media Coverage."
    • Creates an ACF Field Group to capture external article URL and to display the article's media source.
• UCSC News Site
  • Assisted in the development of the soon-to-be-launched UCSC News site in WordPress
  • Assisted in the development of taxonomies for the new site.
  • Developed a working model using Query Loops in the Pantheon Multidev Sandbox site.
• UCSC Events Calendar
  • Facilitated the installation and configuration of the new Emphasis Theme.
  • Updated the Events Calendar Docs site to reflect changes from Emphasis theme.
  • Updated the Events Calendar Users Google group from a Calendar export.
  • Drafted update communication that will be sent to the updated Events Calendar Users group.
  • Continuous ad-hoc support for Calendar users.
• Open Labs
  • Regular contributor and educator in our weekly/bi-weekly Open Labs sessions as a WordPress expert.
• Graduate Student WordPress Branding Presentations
  • Continued my now-annual sessions to graduate students
  • Two sessions in the Fall on general WordPress and Personal Branding

Failures

• UCSC Gutenberg Blocks Plugin
  • The Gutenberg Blocks plugin includes blocks for the Campus Directory, Class Schedule, Course Catalog, and the deprecated Accordion and Accordion Wrapper blocks.
  • In an attempt to clean up and organize the code, I missed the build step (more accurately, I did not realize Kumar had previously shipped the code "built," i.e., he included the build directory).
  • I also did not have a proper testing regimen in place so what I thought tested "good" was, in fact, not good at all.
  • This resulted in the above mentioned blocks being unavailable for Campus users for approximately one week.
• Lessons learned
  • TESTING As a result of this failure, I re-vamped my local development environment and established a better testing process.
  • DON'T BITE OFF MORE THAN I CAN CHEW The work I did in the GB plugin was done over several months and had way too large a scope. I learned to take issues in smaller bites (bytes? 😃) and to properly scope the intended changes prior to doing the work.