This site is itself a project — a deliberate exercise in using a constrained platform and making every decision count.
The foundation is WordPress with a modified Twenty Twenty-Five block theme. The modifications live in a custom plugin rather than a child theme, which keeps the theme upgradeable and forces every design decision to be explicit rather than inherited. Custom post types handle the structured content (work roles, personal projects, apps), a Buttondown integration handles the newsletter without an off-the-shelf plugin, and the CSS is written to a single inline style sheet so there is nothing to dequeue or fight with.
The design philosophy was simplicity and storytelling over spectacle. No hero carousels, no parallax, no feature walls. The typography does the work — Fraunces for display, Fira Code for metadata — and the layout stays out of the way. The color system is small on purpose: warm charcoal, sand, and a single rust accent.
The site is also a demonstration that working inside constraints is a skill. WordPress has real limits as a platform and a real ceiling on elegance. The goal was to find the ceiling, understand it, and build something that feels considered right up to it.