Five years ago, when WordPress blocks were new, I wanted to use them for the whole dashboard.
I paid someone to build it and called it Mission Ctrl. It got some attention and a few sales, but eventually I stopped working on it.
Trying it again with AI in 2024
I got curious: Could Cursor + Claude rebuild this entire plugin for me?
Spoiler alert: HELL YES THEY COULD. And it’s actually amazing.
What surprised me: I have literally no idea how it works. It just… does. So I asked Cursor to explain it to me like I’m five (okay, maybe like I’m a developer, but still).
How it’s built
The Big Idea: Replace the dashboard with the block editor you already use for posts and pages. You can add widgets and arrange the layout yourself.
The WordPress 6.0+ features it uses
The block editor
Uses fancy React components with names like BlockEditorProvider, BlockList, and Inserter.
Modern Block Registration
Everything lives in a tidy block.json file instead of messy PHP. It’s the Marie Kondo of code.
The REST API
Custom endpoints that save your dashboard layouts and fetch widgets. It’s like having a personal butler for your dashboard data.
Server-Side Rendering
The “Dashboard Widget” block actually hijacks WordPress’s native widgets (the “At a Glance” stuff) and displays them right inside blocks. Sneaky!
WordPress Build Tools
Uses @wordpress/scripts which is basically WordPress saying “here’s all the complicated webpack stuff, pre-configured, you’re welcome.”
How It Actually Works (The Flow):
- Hijacks your dashboard → Redirects to the custom block editor
- Stores your layout → Saves it as serialized blocks in the database
- Renders everything → Uses WordPress’s own parsing/rendering functions
- Gives you the editor → Full React-powered block editor, just like the Site Editor
- Custom widget block → Wraps native WordPress widgets in block clothing
Why I wanted it
WordPress 6.0+ made this possible with stabilized APIs and better tooling. Basically, I took the technology powering Full Site Editing and just… pointed it at the dashboard instead.
The Result? A dashboard I can customize, built with AI’s help.
I’m still getting used to being able to do this. 🚀
END OF TRANSMISSION · FILE SAVED
Transmission complete.
The workshop keeps humming. Teddy stamps the paper and pretends this was all according to plan.
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