Stephon RuddIndependent projects & systems

Independent build / Publishing operations

CASE STUDY 01

One operator.
A connected
publishing system.

I built StephonRudd.com to support a publishing operation I could run independently. A custom WordPress theme and scheduled agent workflows connect research, writing, publication, email, and social distribution.

Explore the workflow Visit live website
Project owner
Stephon Rudd
My role
Theme & workflow development
Operating model
Solo operation
Platform
WordPress

01 / The challenge

Keep publishing.
Keep time to create.

As a solo operator without staff, I needed a website and a production workflow that could handle recurring research, editorial work, and distribution while leaving room for original content, products, and podcasting.

I used WordPress as the foundation to speed up development, then created my own theme rather than choosing a prebuilt one.

I designed the site and its background workflows as one connected publishing operation.

I built the WordPress theme over about a month and developed an instruction library and scheduled workflows around it. Agents follow task-specific rules, prepare daily content, stagger publication, and distribute each item. Email follows a separate trigger tied to the blog post.

Custom themeMarkdown playbooksScheduled agentsConditional distribution

02 / Behind the website

From morning research
to coordinated delivery.

Scheduled agents run on my always-on computer. The morning workflow prepares two recent news stories and a separate blog post, then coordinates when and where each is published.

News stories in the daily workflow
2
Rotating news categories
16
Rotating blog categories
6
Research recency window
24–48hours

The instruction layer

Markdown documents define how agents carry out each task. Scheduled workflows put those instructions into action.

Task and editorial rules

Playbooks cover site design and functionality, product-copy rewriting for exported promotional material, news discovery, categories, article length, and the interval between regular content and promotions.

Distinct writing voices

Separate instructions guide fiction, nonfiction, copywriting, and marketing. Blog content follows my voice and perspective; news-writing instructions call for reporting without editorial slant.

Author context and consistency

Documented preferences, viewpoints, and relevant background guide the writing toward my established voice. The goal is to keep generated content consistent with how I express myself.

The daily publication sequence

Relative timing · Variable publication offsets
  1. Scheduled morning run

    Research & prepare

    Find two news stories from the previous 24–48 hours, rotating across 16 categories. Prepare a blog post from one of six rotating topic categories.

  2. First publication

    News story 1

    Publish the first news item immediately. Its publication also initiates social distribution.

  3. About 1–2 hours later

    News story 2

    Publish the second item at a variable, off-the-hour time. The interval avoids an identical daily publication schedule.

  4. About 1 hour after story 2

    The blog post

    Publish the post in my voice. This event initiates social distribution and is the trigger for the email workflow.

Every news or blog publication

X · Substack · Facebook · Telegram Telegram delivery uses a bot I coded against its API.

Workflow described by the project owner. News reporting follows neutrality instructions; the separate blog follows the author's voice and perspective.
Separate evergreen workflow20–30short posts scheduled by a Claude agent

Adapt the same operation to different channels.

A separate agent schedules evergreen content for Substack and my Facebook page. Its instructions call for longer Facebook posts and shorter Substack versions.

This is a separate scheduling workflow from the morning news and blog sequence.

Unattended local execution. Agents run on my always-on computer, allowing scheduled work to continue while I am away from the desk.

03 / The public experience

A shared home for
content and commerce.

The navigation gives each major purpose a place. Articles support discovery, the catalog organizes products, and signup and account links offer clear next steps.

Visitor-facing site structure.
01

Give readers a starting point

The homepage combines recent headlines, a featured article, and a continuing post feed so visitors can find current work and keep exploring.

02

Organize product choices

Catalog categories and sorting lead to individual product pages with imagery, descriptions, prices, and color and size options.

03

Connect content to the audience

Book promotion and a chapter signup form sit within the publishing experience, alongside social links and a feed subscription option.

04 / Theme development

An iterative build.
A deliberate use of AI.

I paired a practical WordPress foundation with an original theme. AI supported coding, diagnosis, and review while I worked through changes to the site.

Tools in the workflow

WordPressVS CodeClaudeChatGPTCommand PromptGrok
Custom theme on an established platformWordPress supplies the publishing foundation. My original development focused on the theme, its presentation, and the iterative work needed to bring the site together.

  1. Start with the right foundation

    I chose WordPress to shorten the initial setup and give the project an established publishing framework.

  2. Develop the theme from scratch

    Over roughly one month, I used Claude and VS Code to develop my own theme instead of starting with an off-the-shelf WordPress theme.

  3. Diagnose issues locally

    I used ChatGPT to assist with diagnostics, including work at the local level through Command Prompt.

  4. Review potential security issues

    I used Grok for security-focused checks and made changes in response to potential gaps.

  5. Check functionality after changes

    I returned to Claude after making changes to help check whether security-related revisions affected site functionality.

06 / The result

A daily operation.
Built around one person.

The system handles recurring research, content preparation, scheduled publication, and distribution while I am away from the desk. It is designed to reduce the routine workload of a solo publication and give me more room for content, product creation, and podcasting.

Explore StephonRudd.com
  • Original WordPress theme
  • Markdown task & voice instructions
  • Scheduled research & staggered publishing
  • Blog-triggered RSS & AWeber email
  • Social distribution & custom Telegram bot

07 / Transferable skills

What I bring
to the next project.

This project combines hands-on website development with workflow orchestration, task specification, conditional logic, and channel-specific communication. Those skills carry into operations, support, quality assurance, and automation work.

Workflow orchestration

Connecting scheduled research, staggered publication, and distribution while giving email its own trigger.

In this project: a blog publication event controls the email workflow.

Instruction design

Turning editorial rules, author voice, category rotation, and promotion cadence into reusable Markdown playbooks.

In this project: separate rules for reporting, blog content, and marketing.

Integration & diagnosis

Combining a custom theme and Telegram API bot with RSS, AWeber, and AI-assisted diagnostics.

In this project: connected tools serving a solo publishing operation.