The Erasmus+ selection asks for a personal blog made in WordPress, with at least five pages, including one about hobbies and one for contact. I wanted mine to look like me, not like a template.
The plan. Nine pages, English and Romanian, and a design inspired by the Japanese indie games I love. The homepage opens like the title screen of a bullet-hell game: the patterns are drawn live in code, and each one gets a "spell card" name.
The tools. WordPress runs locally with Local. The theme is a custom block theme, so every page can still be edited in the WordPress editor. Polylang handles the two languages. I built it together with AI coding assistants, Claude Code and Codex. I made the decisions, reviewed the results, and asked for changes until it felt right, including throwing away a first design I didn't like.
What I learned. How a block theme is structured (theme.json, templates, patterns), why fixed text in templates needs its own translation system, and how much work goes into small things like a dark mode that remembers your choice.
What I'd change. Next time I'd write more of the code myself, starting with the small parts. That's exactly what I want to practise in Barcelos.