Section: Pre-requisites & Local Environment

Configuring Your Local WordPress Environment

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With your machine’s system runtimes verified, you need a local development sandbox to run WordPress, manage databases, and execute WP-CLI scripts.

In this lesson, we will explore the two most popular, high-efficiency WordPress local environment tools: **WordPress Studio** and **LocalWP**, helping you configure your ideal stack.

Option A: WordPress Studio (Highly Recommended)

WordPress Studio is the official, high-speed, and incredibly lightweight local environment app developed by Automattic.

Key Benefits

Installation & Launch Steps

Option B: LocalWP (Standard Sandbox Stack)

LocalWP (formerly Local by Flywheel) is a robust, widely-used Docker-based local development application.

Key Benefits

Installation & Launch Steps

Summary Recommendation

  • **Choose WordPress Studio** if you want a lightweight, blazing-fast, and resource-friendly local environment that makes running terminal scripts and AI agent hooks extremely seamless.
  • **Choose LocalWP** if you require a traditional MySQL database, need to replicate production Nginx server configurations, or want robust email trapping tools.

In the next section, we will clone WP Rig and run the initialization compilers!

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Verification & Installation of System Runtimes

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Before diving into theme engineering, you must ensure your local development machine has the required system runtimes installed. WP Rig relies on modern compiler libraries and package managers to achieve fast, optimized asset builds and static PHP analysis.

In this lesson, you will learn how to verify and install the core dependencies of WP Rig v3.

The Required Runtimes

Ensure your terminal can access the following five system packages:

1. Git (Source Control)

2. Node.js (v20+ or newer)

3. Bun (High-Performance Runtime)

4. PHP (v8.1 or higher – v8.3 Recommended)

5. Composer (PHP Dependency Manager)

Summary Checklist

Run this command in your terminal to verify that everything is configured correctly:

git --version && node --version && bun --version && php --version && composer --version

If all commands output successful version strings, your development machine is fully primed! In the next lesson, we will set up your local WordPress development site.

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