CORA Parts

Just a quick write-up to explain the different repos in the CORA project and how they interrelate. There are quite a few of them in here and all this stuff used to just be all lumped together into “skeletor”, so some of them seem to be very similar.

Bitbucket Repos

The repos can be broken down into two basic groups: framework stuff (like the installer or parent theme) and tool stuff (like Cora Composer)

Site Structure

Create Cora Site

The main “point of entry” for developers using Cora, (as opposed to those working on it). This repo is a NodeJS script that clones Cora Env to create a new site repo, starts it up in a local Docker container, installs our standard Plugin Stack and Configuration, and creates a key pair to install on Bitbucket and WP Engine for the Pipelines deployment.

npx bitbucket:madebyvital/create-cora-site ~/Sites/my-new-site -u –title=”My New Site” –themedir=”my-new-site” –namespace=”My_New_Site”

There are a few requirements to run this script:

• You must have a local Docker server running
• NodeJS 24+
• @wordpress/env must be installed as a global module
• An auth.json file in your home folder for Composer. (see 1Password)

Cora Env

This is the repo cloned by Create Cora Site to use as the starting point for a new site build repo. It uses @wordpress/env to create a Docker container based on the .wp-env.json file.
Do NOT clone this repo directly unless your intent is to work on the prototype. If you are looking to create a new site you should run the create-cora-site script which will clone and configure this, and then also reinitialize the result as a new repository. If you’re looking to modify the default state of our “empty” child theme, this is where you’ll find it!

Cora 2026

Cora 2026 is the “parent theme” in our system. When building an actual WordPress website, this will just be one part of it, and it’s a part that you should not touch! Add a child theme and put your customizations in there. Even though on paper we shouldn’t need it, Templated Builds should still have a child theme. The installer is going to add it anyway and sooner or later we’ll be glad it’s there.

Cora Tools

First Priorities

Cora Chat

AI-powered chatbot widget. (listed here because it’s already “out” on the Vital Handbook, might be low-priority relative to other ones in this section)

Cora Composer

Block Editor utility to instantiate Block Patterns from the site catalog pre-filled with content based on a prompt.

Cora Core

A collection of backend styles/templates/widgets to customize the WordPress backend experience.

On the Roadmap

Cora Accessibility

Cora Clarity

Cora Compliance

Cora Connect 

Cora DXP

Cora Forms

Cora Patterns

Cora Responsive

Cora SEO

Domains

Overview

All of the sites in the “Cora Network” are hosted on the cora account on WP Engine and are a mix of functional and presentational content.

coraweb.com

The public-facing, branded site which explains what Cora is and why it’s cool, but centered on actually selling people on using it. This would be a sales tool, and I suppose we’d probably want a page in here somewhere that serves as a hub for the various “vertical” sites in the network.

Functional

These are domains that could be accessed by the public, but really these are used for a technical purpose and so we should try to keep them under wraps.

base.coraweb.com

This should always be representative of the default starting state of a new Cora build when the install has finished. Probably light on actual content, but we would likely want stuff like Privacy Policy and Terms pages ready in here, and I do like having some kind of “Welcome to Cora, developer, here’s what to do next” (see fseskeletor.wpengine.com) and then we’ve also talked about having the network “self-document”, so I could see that kind of content using this site as the central location for that.

dev.coraweb.com

The dev site for base.coraweb.com. Active work on branches that haven’t merged into main will be visible here, basically exactly like our dev sites on any other project, so it will likely be a bit of a “wild west” with unfinished features and broken tests.

sandbox.coraweb.com (not up yet)

The vision for this one is that it’s essentially just a clone of basedot, but with two extra special features:

• Login Access for all Vital Employees
• A nightly reset script (and probably a Button somewhere in the admin to invoke manually)
  Basically just

Presentational

These are our “demo sites” for different kinds of verticals. There may be a few slight differences in terms of plugins and what’s going on in their respective child themes, but overall these sites should all be pretty much the same thing: a cora-env repo with cora-currentyear and a custom child theme.

A potential future feature could be a step in create-cora-site that lets us choose one of these network sites to migrate from instead of the vanilla starting point.

campus.coraweb.com

Cora site running a child theme+plugin stack targeting the Higher Education space.

ecommerce.coraweb.com

Cora site running a child theme+plugin stack including Woocommerce.

fintech.coraweb.com

Cora site running a child theme+plugin stack targeting the Financial Technology space.

mfg.coraweb.com

Cora site running a child theme+plugin stack targeting the Manufacturing space.

service.coraweb.com

Cora site running a child theme+plugin stack targeting the B2B space.