Rob Ruiz has worked with WordPress since around 2010, moving from design into development, software engineering, and architecture. He currently works at an agency and on side projects. Rob is the current maintainer of WP Rig (wprig.io), an open-source theme development toolkit and starter theme that aims to give developers a modern, minimal, best-practice-driven starting point for building WordPress themes.
What WP Rig Is
WP Rig is both a starter theme and a development framework. Think of it like a modern, opinionated equivalent to underscore-based starter themes, but with a full developer toolkit integrated: Composer and Node dependencies, build tools, linters, and other utilities to enforce standards and speed up development. It scaffolds files and tooling so you don’t start from zero, and it includes commands to convert between theme paradigms (classic, hybrid, block-based).
Why Rob Picked WP Rig
Rob was drawn to WP Rig’s minimalism, alignment with WordPress core practices, and the way it makes standards and modern CSS workflows accessible. It embraced modern CSS features (via tooling like PostCSS historically, and newer tooling now) so developers could write future-facing CSS while the build step ensured compatibility. Importantly, it avoids introducing foreign templating layers that diverge from WordPress’s native approach, making it familiar to WordPress developers.
Who WP Rig Is For
– Designers or site owners who want to learn and gradually move into development.
– Developers and agencies building bespoke sites who want a consistent, opinionated workflow.
– Teams that need shared tooling and guardrails to keep code readable, consistent, and reviewable.
WP Rig is useful for learners because it lets you “nibble” at development: focus on CSS or templates first, then gradually adopt deeper tooling. It’s also valuable for professionals because of its automation, build optimizations, and tools that enforce coding standards.
Learning Curve and Requirements
Development with WP Rig happens on your local machine. You’ll need:
– Node.js (for JavaScript tooling)
– Composer (for PHP package management)
– A local WordPress environment (Local WP, wp-env, Docker, or similar)
The WP Rig workflow runs build processes locally: converting modern CSS to browser-compatible CSS, compiling TypeScript/JavaScript, linting PHP, and bundling a production-ready theme. WP Rig’s bundle step generates a new theme package with your theme’s name, replacing WP Rig references so the shipped theme looks like your own.
Why Code Gives More Control
Rob contrasts page-builder/GUI approaches with code-based theme development. Page builders are convenient but impose constraints—settings and values are saved to the database and can be cumbersome to change globally. Coding gives “superpowers”: full, immediate control over HTML, CSS, and JS. For people seeking maximum customization and long-term maintainability, learning to theme via code provides flexibility and the ability to adopt new web standards faster than waiting for builders to expose controls.
Full Site Editing and Block Themes
Full Site Editing (FSE) shifted how themes are built. Rob initially worried FSE would make theme frameworks obsolete, but he now sees it as another paradigm WP Rig must support. WP Rig was originally classic-theme-focused, but it includes commands to convert a project into hybrid or block-based themes. Themes control whether a site uses FSE features, so WP Rig supports block authoring at the theme level.
There’s debate about whether blocks belong in plugins or themes. Rob notes theme-level blocks make sense in certain contexts—navigation blocks are a good example, where custom navigation needs tightly integrated theme behavior. However, if you bake blocks into a theme and plan to submit to the wordpress.org theme repository, you may run into restrictions, so that choice depends on distribution plans.
Education and Guardrails
A primary WP Rig goal is education. The project includes documentation, videos, and checks that act as guardrails: linters, PHPCS with the WordPress Coding Standards (WPCS), and build-time checks that help you catch issues early. These tools help new contributors produce code that meets WordPress standards, easing the review process and reducing the friction of contributing or distributing themes.
Maintainer Experience and Project Evolution
When Rob adopted WP Rig, it needed modernization. The project initially used older build tools (Gulp, PostCSS workflows). Rob overhauled the toolkit (resulting in WP Rig v3), adopting faster modern tools like esbuild and Lightning CSS to improve performance and capability. The work included making WP Rig faster, leaner, and more aligned with modern front-end practices.
Community and Contribution
Historically WP Rig had a larger contributor base; after the original maintainer stepped back, activity decreased. Today Rob manages most maintenance, with occasional contributions from a handful of contributors. There is a WP Rig Discord and a YouTube channel linked from the site. The GitHub repo includes contributing guidelines and a CONTRIBUTING.md to help new contributors open issues or submit pull requests. Rob welcomes community involvement and wants WP Rig to help bring more developers into WordPress contribution.
Why WP Rig Matters
Rob emphasizes the importance of tools that teach and onboard new contributors to the open-source WordPress ecosystem. The more people learn to develop and contribute, the healthier the broader ecosystem will remain. WP Rig acts as both a practical starter toolkit for shipping themes and a learning platform that encourages developers to adopt standards and eventually contribute back to WordPress Core and related projects.
Getting Started and Contact
To explore WP Rig and its learning resources, visit wprig.io. The site includes docs, video tutorials, and contribution information. Rob is reachable on LinkedIn and on the WP Rig Discord; he’s open to helping people get started, answering questions, and guiding contributors.
Summary
WP Rig provides a modern, opinionated starter theme and developer toolkit that supports classic, hybrid, and block-based theme development. It lowers the barrier to learning WordPress theme development while enforcing best practices and modern build workflows. For learners, designers moving into development, agencies, and anyone wanting tighter control of theme behavior, WP Rig is positioned as a practical, educational, and production-ready starting point.
