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Block Theme Starter

Theme screenshot

What is this?

This is a barebones WordPress block theme starter. Use it to build your next block theme!

This project is targeted toward agencies or developers building tightly controlled themes for clients. To facilitate full control of the editing experience, the following WordPress core features have been disabled:

  • Core block patterns
  • Core block styles
  • Block directory
  • Openverse integration

This project comes with a custom block template that you can use with @wordpress/create-block. The idea is to build custom blocks into the theme itself. See Custom Blocks for details.

Quick Start

  1. Make sure you're on node version 18.12.1 or later.
  2. Run npm install from this directory to install dependencies.
  3. Run npm run watch to watch CSS and JavaScript assets, and Custom Blocks.
  4. Optionally follow the local environment instructions below to spin up a wp-env environment.
  5. Create a new custom block with npm run create:block.

Workflow

This project provides a minimal starting point for building out WordPress themes from finished mockups.

The workflow for building a new theme with this starter might look something like this:

  1. Build up theme.json

    Using the styleguide from the mockups you're working with, add colors, font families, font styles, etc... to theme.json. Check out the Global Settings & Styles section of the Block Editor Handbook to learn about everything that's possible with theme.json.

  2. Add css mixins

    Create mixins for things like text styles where you need to set multiple properties at the same time. See the abstracts README for details.

  3. Add core Block Styles and Block Variations

    Add styles and/or variations for core blocks like the button block so that the options available in editor match the design. For more information check out the Block Styles README and the Block Variations README. This theme removes all core block styles and variations so you're starting from scratch.

  4. Build out Block Patterns

    Previous steps set the foundation for the theme. Now you can create custom block patterns for the more simple components in the design. Use the Create Block Theme plugin to copy the patterns you create in editor to the /patterns directory.

    If you need to create custom styles for your patterns, give them class names and add styles to a CSS file in /assets/css/patterns/. See the Block Pattern CSS README for details.

  5. Build out custom blocks

    For more complex components in the design, create custom blocks. See the Custom Blocks README for more information.

  6. Build out page templates

    Once you're done building all components in the design, create your page templates. Use the Create Block Theme plugin to copy the templates you create in editor to the /templates directory.

  7. You're done!

Editor and Frontend Assets

This theme uses wp-scripts to build editor and frontend assets. The main editor entry is at assets/js/editor/index.js and the main frontend entry is at assets/js/frontend/index.js.

To build the assets, run the following command in your terminal:

npm run build:assets

This will take the entry files, build them and all imports with wp-scripts, and output the files to build/assets. To watch for changes to your assets and automatically rebuild, run the following command in your terminal:

npm run watch:assets

Custom Blocks

This theme uses wp-scripts to build custom Gutenberg blocks. Add your custom blocks in the blocks/ directory. Each block should have its own directory.

Create Block

This theme includes a custom block template to make it quick to scaffold custom blocks and keep everything consistent. To use it run the follwing command:

npm run create:block

This will run @wordpress/create-block using the template in /blocks/_template. Follow the prompts to set up your block.

While developing your block you can watch for changes to all blocks and automatically rebuild with the following command:

npm run watch:blocks

Or watch everything with:

npm run watch

To build the blocks, run the following command in your terminal:

npm run build:blocks

This will take all of your blocks inside blocks/, build them with wp-scripts and output them to build/blocks/ directory. Blocks will be automatically enqueued in inc/register-custom-blocks.php

Custom blocks in the theme should be tied to the design or functionality of the site. See 10up's reasoning over here for more information.

Optional Local Environment

This theme includes a .wp-env.json. To spin up a WordPress environment with wp-env first make sure Docker is installed. Then run the following command to start the environment:

npm run env:start

You can stop the environment with Docker Desktop or the stop command:

npm run env:stop

See the wp-env documentation for more details.