The first step in building custom WordPress themes with WP Rig is to set up a robust development environment on your computer. You’ll need:
- A local server environment to run WordPress itself
- A code editor or IDE
- And all the browsers you can get your hands on for testing.
These will work in combination with the build tools in WP Rig to make up your development environment. My preferred setup, and the one I’m using in this course, is:
- Local by Flywheel for my local server environment
- A fresh WordPress install populated with the WordPress Theme Unit Test data
- Development plugins, including Monster Widget and Show Current Template.
Finally, we use VS Code with the editor config, ESLint, PHP IntelliSense, phpcs, Prettier, and stylelint extensions installed. All these tools are free and can be installed across Windows, Mac OS, and Linux.
To follow along I recommend you set up the same or similar tools on your computer. You’ll find a full breakdown of the recommended tools and extensions below, and in the Wiki on the WP Rig GitHub repo.
Recommended code editor extensions
To take full advantage of the features in WP Rig, your code editor needs support for the following features:
VS Code extensions
For VS Code users, here’s a list of recommended code editor extensions.