Summernight

Summernight was a project I could never get right. I built it—this WordPress theme—and it became this unfinished thing I kept picking at. Not in the good way where you’re refining something. In the way where you’re just making it worse, adding complexity when it needed subtraction, and eventually you get so sick of looking at it that you have to walk away.

For years I just left it there, buried deep enough that I didn’t have to think about it anymore.

Recently though, something shifted. I started thinking about all the half-completed work scattered around, all the abandoned projects, and it felt cowardly to just let them disappear. So I’m putting Summernight out there. Not because it’s good. But because it exists, and maybe someone will find something useful in how broken it is.

The honest truth: it’s raw. There are no design files, no PSDs. I coded it directly into existence, made decisions I regret, left the mistakes in place. If you’re comfortable digging into WordPress code and installing the plugins it needs—PageBar, Readers_Post, Get Custom Field Values—and actually understanding what’s happening under the hood, maybe you’ll get something out of it. If you’re not, don’t bother.

I’m not going to pretend I’m proud of it now, or that releasing it means I’ve finally made peace with it. But there’s something honest about putting out work that didn’t work, that’s still not working, and just admitting that. Better than letting it rot.