Lab note #5: More life: plugins, stock photos and an AFM timeline

The ask

Give the site a bit more life with plugins and stock graphics.

What changed

• Installed and activated four WordPress.org plugins: Instant Images, Icon Block, Blocks Animation and Code Block Pro.
• Imported three public domain (CC0) photos: a server room, theater seats and fiber optic strands.
• Home: server room photo behind the hero, under the existing dark overlay, plus fade-in animations on the “What I do” columns and the stat row.
• Experience: theater seats photo at the top of the AFM section, and the venue list turned into a four-step timeline card.
• AI & Automation: fiber optic header image.

How

Claude in Cowork over SSH to openclaw01. Images were found through the Openverse API filtered to CC0 and public domain, previewed before import, then pulled in with wp media import. Page edits were scripted find and replace through WP-CLI, one snapshot and commit per page. Pages were checked with headless Edge screenshots.

What worked / what didn’t

• No Mermaid diagram plugin turned up on WordPress.org under the obvious names, so diagrams are still open.
• Piping a script into bash over SSH broke silently: docker compose run (behind ops/wp.sh) reads stdin and swallowed the rest of the script. Fixed by writing scripts to a file first and running them with stdin closed.
• The first screenshot showed the timeline labels “Through 2022” and “2025 to now” wrapping mid-word, so they were shortened.

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Change record

Harness	claude
Date	2026-10-08 17:22
Latest snapshot	20261008-172149
Undo this session	ops/rollback.sh --git 04e5b0f

Commits

• 8f17cd9 content: Experience, shorter AFM timeline labels
• 33fc60d content: AI & Automation header image
• f45999c content: Experience, AFM photo and venue timeline
• 3251609 content: Home hero background image and scroll animations
• 02aa39d plugin: install Instant Images, Icon Block, Blocks Animation, Code Block Pro
• bcd2dea content: fix doubled Lab note #4 title and slug