Hi, I’m Helen Hou-Sandí!
I am the Director of Open Source Initatives at 10up and a WordPress Lead Developer. As a technologist, I am a leader in open source software and care deeply about building great user experiences. I am also a classically-trained pianist who’s performed extensively worldwide.
Latest blog posts
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Exploring custom blocks from a PHP-centric developer UX point of view
I’ve spent the last 8 months telling anybody I talk to about custom WordPress block development that they were way less scary and much easier than I thought they were going to be as somebody with minimal React experience, and that achieving a 1:1 editor experience where you manipulate directly in the content area instead -
Making my custom keyboard even more custom
The first time I saw the Naked60BMP it was sold out, but I knew it had to be mine. The layout I like and the ability to make it Bluetooth, in something so unique and portable? Sold. So when it finally came back in stock, I immediately grabbed a red one, because that was the -
Updating a WordPress plugin with a publish metabox field for the block editor
Many years ago (October 2015, to be exact) I wrote a small plugin that allows you to add a note when updating a post, intended as a way to describe what was changed in that revision. For the developer set, it’s kind of like commit messages for your WordPress post/content updates. It was created to -
KAT Dots: DIY dye sublimation keycaps
Like many people, between general interest and needing a pandemic-friendly hobby, I have gotten into mechanical keyboards. In browsing through endless photos of interesting builds, I discovered a really cool keycap set called GMK Dots by a really cool designer known as biip. Originally a joke, people loved them so much that they really got -
On virality, or an egg bread recipe
Just kidding I’m not going to wax poetic on virality. But, I posted this timelapse to Twitter once upon a time and later set it to a truly annoying sound on TikTok because I was curious about the video editor and have almost 3 million views there, which just goes to show it’s all meaningless. -
What software teams can learn from music masterclasses
I come from a musical background, with degrees in piano performance and piano accompanying and chamber music, and I think a lot about how that’s shaped who I’ve become in web and software development. I’ve even gotten to give a talk relating musicianship skills to programming and open source management in a concert hall in
