5andbox

A bare bones WordPress starter kit. Includes useful plugins, functions and a Vite build that compiles Tailwind CSS v4 and bundles JavaScript with HMR in development and hashed, manifest-driven assets in production.

Installation

• Create a new directory for your website:

cd ~/projects/my-new-website

• Download a fresh Wordpress install:

With WP-CLI http://wp-cli.org/:

wp core download

Or with a terminal:

curl https://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz --output latest.tar.gz
tar xfz latest.tar.gz
mv wordpress/* ./
rmdir ./wordpress/
rm -f latest.tar.gz

• Rename wp-config-sample.php to wp-config.php and configure it with your database information.

• Remove the wp-content directory (this repository will replace it):

rm -rf wp-content/

• Clone this repository:

git clone git@github.com:dylanfisher/5andbox.git wp-content

• Rename the 5andbox theme to your new website's name:

cd wp-content/themes/

mv 5andbox/ my-new-website/

• Edit the style.css file and configure the Theme Name, URI, author and description.

• Delete the .git directory and initialize a new git repo in the theme directory (unless you want to track plugins):

cd ~/projects/my-new-website/wp-content/
rm -rf .git
mv .gitignore themes/my-new-website/
cd themes/my-new-website
git init
git add -A
git commit -m "first commit"

Recommended Plugins

This theme ships with Advanced Custom Fields and Classic Editor. You may also find the following plugins helpful.

• SVG Support
• WP Migrate DB Pro

Developing

The front-end build lives in the theme. It requires Node.js 24 (see themes/5andbox/.nvmrc).

cd wp-content/themes/5andbox
nvm use
npm install
npm run dev   # Vite dev server + watch build

npm run dev serves assets from the Vite dev server with hot-module reloading when WP_DEBUG is true; otherwise the theme enqueues the built assets in assets/dist/. Run npm run build to produce the production bundle.

See the 5andbox theme README for full developing, template, and deploy notes.

Excluding build files from your text editor

Add the following to your text editor's project configuration to exclude build files from being indexed.

Sublime Text:

{
  "folders":
  [
    {
      "path": "/Users/dylanfisher/projects/my-new-website/wp-content/themes/my-new-website",
      "folder_exclude_patterns": ["node_modules", "assets/dist"]
    }
  ]
}

Update Packages

npx npm-check-updates -u

Next Steps

Delete this README and track all changes in git at the theme directory.