WP Framework: A Better Starting Point for WordPress Site Builds
Daryll Doyle on
At Fueled, our wp-scaffold framework has long helped to jumpstart new WordPress projects by automating boilerplate setup, enforcing foundational engineering best practices, and keeping structure consistent across teams. As our codebases grew, we realized that sharing lower level updates and improvements across projects could be easier.
To solve this, we introduced a new Composer package called WP Framework at the start of the year, which we have subsequently open sourced. By moving the common scaffold logic into WP Framework, our project starter becomes leaner and more maintainable, while every project still benefits from shared upgrades over time.
Key benefits of WP Framework include:
- Leaner Projects: The scaffold now pulls in shared functionality from WP Framework, so each project only includes the code it needs. This means less duplicated code and a slimmer starting point.
- Centralized Updates: We can improve, fix, or extend features in one place. When WP Framework updates, all projects can get the changes through Composer without manual edits.
- Standardized Best Practices: WP Framework embeds the best practices we’ve learned into a single package, keeping the foundation consistent across projects. Teams still work with familiar patterns, but with a simpler codebase.
- Stable & Flexible: WP Framework uses strict Semantic Versioning. That ensures bug fixes and new features won’t break existing sites unexpectedly. At the same time, teams can still override or extend parts of the framework for custom needs.
For the more technically minded, I’ve published a more detailed deep dive into how and why we built WP Framework over on LinkedIn.