WP Rig: WordPress Theme Boilerplate
Your Performance-Focused Development Rig
A progressive theme development rig for WordPress, WP Rig is built to promote the latest best practices for progressive web content and optimization. Building a theme from WP Rig means adopting this approach and the core principles it is built on:
- Accessibility
- Lazy-loading of images
- Mobile-first
- Progressive enhancement
- Resilient Web Design
- Progressive Web App enabled
- AMP-ready
Office Hours
WP Rig office hours take place every other Thursday from 5:30 - 6:30 p.m. UTC, starting January 10, 2019.
Join WP Rig core maintainers to chat about the project, work alongside other devs, discuss ideas, address bugs, and more.
- View the WP Rig Google Calendar to see dates and find info to join the discussion
- Subscribe to the WP Rig Google Calendar to stay informed.
Installation
WP Rig has been tested on Linux, Mac, and Windows.
Requirements
WP Rig requires the following dependencies. Full installation instructions are provided at their respective websites.
How to install WP Rig:
- Clone or download this repository to the themes folder of a WordPress site on your development environment.
- DO NOT give the WP Rig theme directory the same name as your eventual production theme. Suggested directory names are
wprig
orwprig-themeslug
. For instance if your theme will eventually be named “Excalibur” your development directory could be namedwprig-excalibur
. Theexcalibur
directory will be automatically created during the production process and should not exist beforehand.
- DO NOT give the WP Rig theme directory the same name as your eventual production theme. Suggested directory names are
- Configure theme settings, including the theme slug and name.
- View
./config/config.default.json
for the default settings. - Place custom theme settings in
./config/config.json
to override default settings.- You do not have to include all settings from config.default.json. Just the settings you want to override.
- Place local-only theme settings in
./config/config.local.json
, e.g. potentially sensitive info like the path to your BrowserSync certificate.- Again, only include the settings you want to override.
- View
- In command line, run
npm run rig-init
to install necessary node and Composer dependencies. - In command line, run
npm run dev
to process source files, build the development theme, and watch files for subsequent changes.npm run build
can be used to process the source files and build the development theme without watching files afterwards.
- In WordPress admin, activate the WP Rig development theme.
Defining custom settings for the project
Here is an example of creating a custom theme config file for the project. In this example, we want a custom slug, name, and author.
Place the following in your ./config/config.json
file. This config will be versioned in your repo so all developers use the same settings.
{
"theme": {
"slug": "newthemeslug",
"name": "New Theme Name",
"author": "Name of the theme author"
}
}
Defining custom settings for your local environment
Some theme settings should only be set for your local environment. For example, if you want to set local information for BrowserSync.
Place the following in your ./config/config.local.json
file. This config will not be tracked in your repo and will only be executed in your local development environment.
{
"browserSync": {
"live": true,
"proxyURL": "localwprigenv.test",
"https": true,
"keyPath": "/path/to/my/browsersync/key",
"certPath": "/path/to/my/browsersync/certificate"
}
}
How to build WP Rig for production:
- Follow the steps above to install WP Rig.
- Run
npm run bundle
from inside thewp-rig
development theme. - A new, production ready theme will be generated in
wp-content/themes
. - The production theme can be activated or uploaded to a production environment.
Wiki: Recommended code editor extensions
To take full advantage of the features in WP Rig, visit the Recommended code editor extensions Wiki page.
Working with WP Rig
WP Rig can be used in any development environment. It does not require any specific platform or server setup. It also does not have an opinion about what local or virtual server solution the developer uses.
Before first run, visit the BrowserSync wiki page.
Available Processes
dev watch
process
npm run dev
will run the default development task that processes source files. While this process is running, source files will be watched for changes and the BrowserSync server will run. This process is optimized for speed so you can iterate quickly.
dev build
process
npm run build
processes source files one-time. It does not watch for changes nor start the BrowserSync server.
translate
process
The translation process generates a .pot
file for the theme in the ./languages/
directory.
The translation process will run automatically during production builds unless the export:generatePotFile
configuration value in ./config/config.json
is set to false
.
The translation process can also be run manaually with npm run translate
. However, unless NODE_ENV
is defined as production
the .pot
file will be generated against the source files, not the production files.
production bundle
process
npm run bundle
generates a production ready theme as a new theme directory and, optionally, a .zip
archive. This builds all source files, optimizes the built files for production, does a string replacement and runs translations. Non-essential files from the wp-rig
development theme are not copied to the production theme.
To bundle the theme without creating a zip archive, define the export:compress
setting in ./config/config.json
to false
:
export: {
compress: false
}
Gulp process
WP Rig uses a Gulp 4 build process to generate and optimize the code for the theme. All development is done in the wp-rig
development theme. Feel free to edit any .php
files. Asset files (CSS, JavaScript and images) are processed by gulp. You should only edit the source asset files in the following locations:
- CSS:
assets/css/src
- JavaScript:
assets/js/src
- images:
assets/images/src
For more information about the Gulp processes, what processes are available, and how to run them individually, visit the Gulp Wiki page.
Browser Support
As WP Rig processes CSS and JavaScript it will support the browsers listed in .browserslistrc
. Note that WP Rig will not add polyfills for missing browser support. WP Rig will add CSS prefixes and transpile JavaScript.
Advanced Features
WP Rig gives the developer an out of the box environment with support for modern technologies including ES2015, CSS grid, CSS custom properties (variables), CSS nesting and more, without making any configurations. Just write code and WP Rig handles the heavy lifting for you.
Configuring the behavior of WP Rig is done by editing ./config/config.json
. Here the developer can set the theme name and theme author name (for translation files), and local server settings for BrowserSync. Additionally, compression of JavaScript and CSS files can be turned off for debugging purposes.
Place your custom theme settings in ./config/config.json
to override default settings, located in ./config/config.default.json
. Place local-only/untracked theme settings in ./config/config.local.json
. For example, if you want to set local information for BrowserSync.
WP Rig ships with advanced features including:
- Lazy-loading images
- Built-in support for the official AMP plugin
- Progressive loading of CSS
- Modern CSS, custom properties (variables), autoprefixing, etc
- Modern layouts through CSS grid, flex, and float
For more information about the advanced features in WP Rig and how to use them, visit the Advanced Features Wiki page.
License
WP Rig is released under GNU General Public License v3.0.