What’s Changed

Project pages: Home-style hero, commercial video, shorter reading blocks

• The project hero now uses the same calm gradient as the Home hero, with the framed media beside the copy. The media also shows on phones, under the copy.
• A project can show a commercial in the hero: a poster with a play button inside a frame with a slow animated gradient ring. It never autoplays and nothing downloads until the visitor presses play; then the native controls (keyboard, fullscreen) take over. Reduced-motion visitors get a still ring.
• The video comes from the new "Hero video URL" field on the project, else a video attached to the project, else a video in the media library whose name contains the project slug. No video means the screenshot shows as before.
• Story steps now read as a one-line lead plus short points. The Handoff text is split the same way. The words are not rewritten, only broken at sentence ends.

19 more notes on GitHub (opens in a new window)

Motion pass: sliding nav indicators, press states, FAQ tween

• New resources/css/motion.css (drawer stagger, press states, FAQ open/close) and resources/js/nav-indicator.js. One sliding capsule per rail moves between items in the header nav (follows hover, rests on the current page) and the sticky "On this page" pills (follows the active section).
• Transform and opacity only; the FAQ block-size tween is the one opt-in exception. Every rule has a prefers-reduced-motion counterpart, and the script does not run for those visitors, so they keep the static styles.
• motion.css is imported just before polish.css, which stays last.

Pause button removed, no bar under hero titles

• The pause-animations button is gone from the header, along with its script and styles. With the button gone, the phone header has more room, and the "Get updates" icon-only range is back to 901 to 1099px.
• Hero titles no longer have the short blue bar under them (page headers, product and project heroes). Section headings keep theirs.

Page polish: green-to-blue edges and easier reading

• New resources/css/polish.css, imported last in app.css. It adds colors, edges and small type only; nothing moves except a 1px hairline.
• Privacy and Terms: section headings (.legal-prose > h2) take the same green-to-blue gradient as the section titles and page titles, with a short gradient rule under them that stretches when the heading is the jump target. They were flat black beside gradient page titles. Print and high-contrast modes fall back to plain text.
• Privacy and Terms: the card gets a gradient top edge in light and dark mode, the dash markers become green-to-blue dots, and "Last updated" is a quiet pill.
• Jumps from the "On this page" rail now land with the card's top edge and eyebrow in view (scroll-margin-top: 5.5rem on legal headings). They cleared the sticky bars by 8px before, with the card's top cut off.

3 more notes on GitHub (opens in a new window)

Plainer copy on the Resources page

• Every tool card and stack line on the Resources page is rewritten in plain language for site owners: what the tool does and why I use it, without jargon like CI, IoC container, or cache-busting. Tool names, links and affiliate flags are unchanged.
• Stack group names are friendlier ("Where I write code", "Hosting and going live", "Design and fonts"), and the jump link reads "More tools" instead of "Stack groups".
• The page intro, section leads and call-to-action text (block content on the Resources page) were reworded to match.

Resources stack list matches what ships

• Search and analytics: Google Tag Manager is replaced by Site Kit by Google, which is what loads GA4 today (resources/js/track.js says there is no Tag Manager container). The GA4 line no longer says it runs through Tag Manager and mentions the product page events from 3.51.0.
• "Microsoft Clarity / Bing" is now "Bing Webmaster Tools". Nothing in the theme loads Clarity or the UET tag, so the line no longer names them.
• Hosting and shipping: adds Freemius, the checkout and license keys for the themes for sale (3.12 onward).
• AI and automation: adds WPVibe, the WordPress connection for posts, pages and settings.

1 more note on GitHub (opens in a new window)

Cobble & Candle page speaks to buyers

• A product on sale no longer shows the "sample work I built in public" note in its hero. Projects that are not for sale keep it.
• On a product on sale, the Feedback heading is "Questions before you buy", the form heading names the product, and the closing band offers a setup instead of "Hire me".
• Like and star buttons hide their number while it is 0, on every project page. The number appears with the first like or star.
• Cobble & Candle catalog entry matches release 1.5.1: 33 blocks (was 28), 13 patterns, 15 templates, version 1.5.1 (was 1.0.1). The audience line no longer mentions hiring managers. One-time reseed mh_product_catalog_v21 updates only this product.

Signup card under the home post grid

• Home "What's new": the email signup under the post grid now sits in its own card, well spaced from the posts. The card has the brand gradient border (lime, cyan, blue, violet), a soft lime-to-blue background, a gradient heading, a pill email field and a lime-to-cyan Subscribe button. On wide screens the text is on the left and the form on the right.
• The card is added when the section renders (blocks/section.blade.php), so page content is unchanged, and it reuses the Journal newsletter form styles.

Spinning frame on the home hero theme card

• Home hero "Newest theme" card: the gradient frame around the screenshot now spins like the About photo ring (one turn every 6 seconds) and shifts to blue, violet and lime on hover or keyboard focus. With reduced motion it stays still.
• The card has the same lime-to-blue gradient background as the About photo card, with a dark-mode version.

Spinning photo ring and card gradient

• About profile photo: the green-to-blue ring now spins around the photo (one turn every 6 seconds) and still shifts to blue, violet and lime on hover or keyboard focus. With reduced motion it stays still.
• The photo card has a soft gradient background: a lime tint at the top left fading through the card color to a blue tint at the bottom right, with a deeper navy version in dark mode.

About profile photo card

• The About profile photo (the Image block with the about-portrait-inline class) sits in a card: a green-to-blue gradient ring around the photo, a centered caption, and the social icons under it in the same box. On hover or keyboard focus the ring turns and shifts to blue, violet and lime; with reduced motion the colors change without the turn.
• The ring and icons are added when the block renders (app/blocks.php), so the page content is unchanged.

About page card hierarchy

• About page only: glance facts, past resume roles and skill tiles now use a quiet hairline border that turns lime on hover. Lime stays on the main cards (services, How I work, the current role, skill groups), so the page has a clear focus and skill tiles no longer show a lime border inside a lime group.

Marketing events wait for gtag

• The GA4 events from 3.51.0 are held in memory until gtag() exists. The cache plugin delays Site Kit's gtag.js until the first tap or scroll, so an event at page load (view_item) found no gtag and was lost. Events now wait up to 30 seconds, then are dropped; nothing is stored in the browser.

Marketing events and a phone call-to-action bar

• GA4 ecommerce events from the Freemius checkout on every product page and the Cobble & Candle landing page: view_item (priced at the cheapest plan), begin_checkout (the plan clicked) and purchase (the plan's list price, with the Freemius subscription or license ID as the transaction ID), sent before the buyer is moved to /account/?purchase=complete. They go to gtag() when Site Kit's gtag.js is on the page and no Tag Manager container is, and to the dataLayer for a container. Nothing is stored in the browser.
• The landing page's cc_cta_click and cc_buy_click events now reach GA4 as well as the dataLayer.
• Landing page on phones: a bar with the price and a "See plans" button appears once the hero scrolls away and hides again at the pricing.

Cobble & Candle landing page

• New page template, "Cobble & Candle landing page": a stand-alone marketing page for the theme with no matthummel.com header or footer, built for ad traffic. It uses the theme's own palette (lamp-black, brass, parchment, oxblood) and Bodoni Moda and Mulish fonts, loads its own small stylesheet and script, and reads its copy, prices and screenshots from the product catalog and the Freemius plan.
• Sections: hero with price and two calls to action, quality strip, six feature cards, screenshots, the four styles, three setup steps, who it is for, pricing with Buy buttons (Freemius overlay), FAQ, closing band and a footer with the legal links, support email and seller line.
• Cobble & Candle logo set (SVG): crest, horizontal and stacked lockups for dark and light backgrounds, and an app icon. Fonts are bundled with their licenses.
• Click events for Google Tag Manager: cc_cta_click (with cc_cta) and cc_buy_click (with cc_plan and cc_licenses).

1 more note on GitHub (opens in a new window)

Footer fallback links

• The built-in footer legal links (used when no Footer Bottom Navigation menu is assigned) now include License and Refunds, so a fresh install matches the site.

Theme purchase terms and privacy

• Terms of use has a "Theme purchases" section: who you are dealing with (Freemius as merchant of record), the license key, what updates and support cover (replies within one business day, ET), compatibility, no warranty and a 12-month liability cap. It links to the new License and Refunds pages.
• Privacy policy names Freemius: a new "Theme purchases & licenses" card, a line in "Who sees your data", and the two statements that said the site had no checkout or accounts now say card details go to Freemius and buyers sign in there.
• Both pages say "Last updated: November 2, 2026". Have a lawyer read the Terms and Privacy changes before they go live.

Cobble & Candle prices

• The Cobble & Candle product page and shop card show the Freemius prices: $59.99, $99.99 and $199.99 a year (they said $59, $99 and $199, which did not match what checkout charges).

Cobble & Candle version

• The Cobble & Candle product page shows release 1.0.1, the version now in Freemius.

Home review

• Theme cards (the Home hero card, the themes grid and the Shop list) show a short blurb that ends on a whole sentence, instead of being cut off mid-sentence with an ellipsis.
• The Home hero and closing band use the same buttons as the inner page heroes: a solid lime-to-cyan main button and an outline second button.
• Page copy on staging: the Questions section is in the "On this page" bar as FAQ, the full-stack card in What I do has a button to Services, and the Home buttons use relative links.