A short guide to using Dirtbag for a small, durable website.
Write
Use headings, paragraphs, lists, quotes, and tables before reaching for custom layout.
Publish
Keep pages stable, posts dated, and navigation obvious.
| Need | Block |
|---|---|
| Section title | Heading |
| Disclosure | Details |
| Data | Table |
The Dirtbag CSS and JS rule
Dirtbag does not add its own frontend CSS or JavaScript dependencies, but it’s not opposed to some inlining, as the odd, improvisational, duct-tape exception. WordPress core CSS and JavaScript are allowed when core blocks need them to render, line up, open, close, or stay accessible. The theme also opts into two of core’s Interactivity-API enhancements on purpose — no-reload feed pagination and the image lightbox — and each falls back to plain links and images when scripting is off.
That means Row, Group, Navigation, Gallery, Media & Text, Search, and other core blocks can use the tools WordPress already ships. Dirtbag does not pack extra tools for a trip around the block.
Roadside Canon
For soundtrack: The War on Drugs, the band, not the policy. Big road songs, long horizons, engine noise under the floor.
For reading: let Bukowski keep the barstool and Robinson Jeffers keep the cliff. Dirtbag takes the shoulder, the ditch, and the long way home.
What the editor lets you touch
Open the block editor and you get a deliberately small toolbox: pick colours off the painted swatches, choose a font, set a size, and swap the whole paint job under Appearance → Editor → Styles. That is the kit.
We unbolted a couple of things on purpose. The custom-colour spray gun is gone — you get the shop colour chart, not a fan deck of ten million hex codes. The drop-shadow is gone too; this is a flat-paint operation, no fake depth. Borders, spacing, and line-height knobs stay capped so no single block wanders off the lot.
Fair warning, though: some factory blocks roll in with their own wiring. Drop an accordion into a page and WordPress core bolts on its own JavaScript to make it fold — Dirtbag cannot yank that out without hauling in the very machinery we left at the curb. “No theme JavaScript” means we do not add any; it does not mean we can confiscate what core brings.