The Theme I Kept Burying

I made this WordPress theme and then spent a long time not releasing it. Hated it, loved it, buried it in a folder I stopped opening. Summernight was the name—raw, unfinished in ways I could feel but not fully diagnose, no source PSDs, no documentation worth the name. The kind of project that teaches you something about sitting with work and not knowing whether it’s done or just abandoned.

Eventually I stopped tinkering and just put it out. If you’re working with WordPress and actually know what you’re doing—not just installed it and moved a widget, but genuinely understand the insides—there are three plugins you’ll need: PageBar for pagination, Readers_Post for the reading counter, and Get Custom Field Values for everything else that needs coaxing into place. Not plug-and-play. More like plug-and-figure-it-out-yourself.

Letting something go after months of sitting on it is a strange feeling. Not quite relief. More like sending a letter to an address you’re not sure still exists.