Nathan Wrigley spoke with Rob Ruiz about WP Rig, the free open‑source starter theme and toolkit for modern WordPress theme development. Rob, a designer turned developer who now works as an architect at an agency, became the project’s maintainer after joining a maintainer call and taking over when the previous lead stepped back.
What WP Rig is
WP Rig is a minimal, opinionated starter theme and framework that bundles PHP templates, Composer packages, Node tooling, and modern build tools to create a contemporary developer experience. Think of it as an updated underscores‑style starter that includes integrated tooling to enforce WordPress best practices, automate CSS and JS processing, and speed up development.
The project targets people who want control and a learning path: experienced developers building production themes, agency teams that need guardrails, and designers who want to begin tinkering with code without adopting foreign templating languages. WP Rig intentionally stays WordPress‑native, favoring PHP templates and close alignment with Core.
Why Rob chose WP Rig
Rob was drawn to WP Rig’s minimal, WordPress‑native approach and its alignment with Core conventions. It supports modern CSS workflows—originally PostCSS and now modern compilers—so developers can author with future CSS features and compile them down for current browser support. WP Rig also provides enforceable guardrails: linters, code checks, and other quality tools that help teams maintain consistent standards across projects.
Who it’s for and the learning curve
WP Rig assumes local development rather than working directly in the remote WP admin. You can start very small—edit a few CSS rules and see immediate results—and adopt more parts of the toolchain over time. Required tools are Node.js, Composer, and a local WordPress environment (Local WP, wp‑env/Docker, WordPress Studio, etc.). Developers new to local tooling can learn incrementally; WP Rig lets you focus on one area (CSS, JS, PHP) without forcing the entire stack at once.
Workflow highlights
The workflow relies on local build tooling to process CSS, TypeScript/JavaScript, and other assets. When you’re ready to ship, WP Rig’s bundle process produces a distributable theme by replacing WP Rig references with your theme name so the shipped package behaves like any other theme. That makes WP Rig suitable for client projects, custom builds, and commercial distribution.
Full Site Editing, blocks, and paradigms
WP Rig began in the classic PHP template paradigm but has evolved to support Full Site Editing (FSE), block themes, and hybrid approaches. It includes CLI commands to convert a project between classic, block, and universal/hybrid modes so teams can pick the paradigm that fits each project. WP Rig also supports block authoring at the theme level—useful for private client work or commercial themes—but baking blocks into a theme disqualifies that theme from the wordpress.org repository, so it’s best for closed‑source or client deliverables.
Rob emphasizes that theme‑level control can be beneficial when blocks are tightly coupled to a design, such as custom navigation blocks that belong to a theme’s specific layout.
Education and standards
A major aim of WP Rig is educational: helping people understand how themes and the web stack fit together—HTML, CSS, and JS—and encouraging contributions to the wider WordPress ecosystem. WP Rig integrates code‑quality tools such as PHPCS with the WordPress Coding Standards (WPCS) so developers can validate code before submitting to repos or shipping to clients. These guardrails reduce friction for contributors and improve theme robustness across both wordpress.org and commercial use.
Community and maintenance
After adopting the project, Rob led a significant v3 overhaul that replaced older tooling (like Gulp) with faster, leaner modern tools such as esbuild and Lightning CSS. The contributor base is smaller than it once was, and much of the ongoing work is driven by Rob with occasional contributors. He aims to grow the community again and invites contributions via GitHub. WP Rig’s site offers documentation, video tutorials, and a Discord community to help newcomers get started.
Getting started and resources
To try WP Rig, visit wprig.io for documentation, tutorials, videos, and contribution links. Prerequisites are Node, Composer, and a local WordPress environment. Rob is available on the WP Rig Discord and LinkedIn for questions and guidance.
Closing
WP Rig is a modern, minimal toolkit for building WordPress themes that supports classic, hybrid, and block paradigms. It’s built to teach, to enforce standards, and to speed development for both learning and professional workflows. Rob encourages developers and designers to explore WP Rig’s educational resources, try the starter in a local environment, and contribute to the project and the broader WordPress ecosystem. For more: wprig.io.