Mark Russell

Building Blockwright, an adaptive WordPress block theme. Twenty years of making systems hold up when it's cold, dark, or live. Santa Fe, NM.

[Mark Russell @markRussellDev]

I scanned 201 local business and nonprofit sites with Auditor 0.11.0, my free website audit. Of the 198 that responded, 28 ran an out-of-date WordPress, plugin or theme with a published serious security flaw.

https://t.co/iDadmdLFBb

[Mark Russell @markRussellDev]

On Ubuntu 26.04, apt treats Mozilla's Firefox as a downgrade: Ubuntu's snap stub has an epoch in its version. And Mozilla's own instructions write two pins to one file with tee, so the second erases the first. The fix:

https://t.co/1h47Rcaghu

[Mark Russell @markRussellDev]

A business searched for its own website and got Google's red "deceptive site ahead" warning. The WordPress site, built years earlier with no security, had been quietly taken over. How I wiped it, recovered the content and rebuilt it secure:

https://t.co/FX5LvoEfYb

[Mark Russell @markRussellDev]

Ubuntu 26.04 installs Firefox and Thunderbird as snaps. I released f-snap: it swaps them for Mozilla's own packages, carries your profile over, and leaves snapd and App Center alone. Dry run, pre-flight and undo included.

https://t.co/Uer9vMQKHG

[Mark Russell @markRussellDev]

Blockwright is my free WordPress block theme, with theme.json as the single source of truth for every design value. Colors follow each visitor's light or dark setting with WCAG AA contrast. Sixteen schemes, over fifty patterns.

https://t.co/se0RsLA8ta

[Mark Russell @markRussellDev]

You go to update your own website and you can't log in. The web guy who built it years ago holds the keys, and the domain's in their name, not yours. You pay for it every month. You still might not own it. https://t.co/59brL6Lizi

[Mark Russell @markRussellDev]

The most expensive risk in most businesses: one person is the only one who knows how something critical works, and none of it is written down. Sometimes innocent, sometimes hoarded on purpose.

People leave. The knowledge should not leave with them.

https://t.co/ffsodMqJcg

[Mark Russell @markRussellDev]

I dig into an arts organization running its all-in-one platform with core features switched off, staff sending patrons what they'd already paid for by hand. The vendor confirmed it was a mistake.

Most software isn't broken. It was never set up right.

https://t.co/3hvhpgq6LM

[Mark Russell @markRussellDev]

Every color in my theme is adaptive, following the visitor's light or dark mode. So a normal image hero (photo, dark scrim, white text) wouldn't build: nothing stays put. The fix: a scrim over a photo isn't a theme surface and must not follow dark mode.

https://t.co/YcJtpyiwC0

[Mark Russell @markRussellDev]

The scary story is AI gets too smart and takes over.

I use it every day. It's a brilliant intern that lies with a straight face and doesn't know it. My job is catching that before it ships.

A tool that never doubts itself needs someone who does.

[Mark Russell @markRussellDev]

A dental office was losing patients to missed calls and no-shows. I set up a text that goes back the second a call is missed, and reminders that send themselves.

Most of what pays isn't AI. It's automation nobody turned on.

https://t.co/JNuWzKtoDR

[Mark Russell @markRussellDev]

WordPress calls it "binding dynamic data to block attributes." Plainly: a block binding is a placeholder on a block. It shows live data at render, and the text you typed is the fallback when the source is empty. The whole idea, and the part the docs skip:

https://t.co/MdwftBMmSn

[Mark Russell @markRussellDev]

A WordPress scheduled post can miss its slot with cron working perfectly. Publishing rides one disposable event, and core has no fallback. Lose that event and the post sits in future forever, showing 'Scheduled' only to you.

https://t.co/NDNJf4PCHM

[Mark Russell @markRussellDev]

A medical office hired me for more patients. The real problem: a neglected Google listing, a duplicate splitting it, and no reviews because nobody asked. Fixed it; their rating went 1 star to 4.5 in a month.

The problem you name is rarely the real one.

https://t.co/B060bqtwAf

[Mark Russell @markRussellDev]

A WordPress Query Loop set to a grid but rendering one column isn't broken. displayLayout grid is a no-op. Core only honors displayLayout flex; the grid moved to the Post Template child's own layout attribute.

https://t.co/eM8MYhsNtX

[Mark Russell @markRussellDev]

text-box-trim went cross-browser this month, and it is the right fix for aligning text to an edge. But the case everyone reaches for it, an icon beside a heading, is a centering problem. Centering never needed it.

Why, measured:
https://t.co/QySuSAR7Bg

[Mark Russell @markRussellDev]

WordPress 7.1 lets plugins register their own icons. Then it deletes your strokes.

Register Tabler or Feather and half arrive as solid black blobs. The sanitizer's allowlist permits no stroke anywhere. The trap is strokes, not the outline look.

https://t.co/5zTKjtMNV7

[Mark Russell @markRussellDev]

WordPress's scariest editor error ("unexpected or invalid content") is a diff, not damage: stored markup vs what the block's save() would write today. One missing class fails the block. Nothing is corrupted. The comparison rules, read from core:
https://t.co/3HGPsuvCYJ

[Mark Russell @markRussellDev]

The two companion pieces, both free on .org:

Blocks (298 icons into 7.1's picker, plus Icon Box, Stat, Timeline): https://t.co/JMW12eq4rK

Workbench (dev tools for block themes): https://t.co/Axcj6oTFtl

[Mark Russell @markRussellDev]

WordPress 7.1 shipped today and finally opens the Icon block to plugins.

Blockwright, my free adaptive block theme, already uses it: 298 icons in the core picker + the new Tabs. Light/dark, no toggle.

Free: https://t.co/cmPMogLFvN