I'm actually saying giving a class name to all elements that you use inside the body tag.
Really good reference is the new Calypso [1] Repository which has some really nice examples [2].
To answer specifically to your example. I usually write something like this :
<h1 class="heading">Use <strong class="heading-keyword">classes</strong> instead of tag names</h1>
Semantically the css looks much better
.heading { ... }
.heading-keyword { ... }
Also keep in mind that CSS has built-in specificy, which is a game-changer and can turn your code into a nightmare. For your example I would never write ( using the same markup ) :
h1 strong { color: blue; }
strong { color: red; /* won't work */ }
because to override it i would need to include the hierarchy all the time.
1: https://github.com/Automattic/wp-calypso/
2: https://git
Automattic
wp-calypso
TypeScript2015–2024
Automattic / wp-calypso
wp-calypso
The JavaScript and API powered WordPress.com
30Distinct people
39Mentions
1Explicit recommenders
12.7KGitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
The JavaScript and API powered WordPress.com
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use was verified in the last source check.
What people are saying
I love that you are also working in the open! At Automattic we do a lot of Open Source development. You can even see my PR introducing Sentry to our frontend:…
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This week on Hacker News
Nov 8–Nov 15 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/15/2026, 7:24:48 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by year39 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2015-11-23 18:29:06 UTC to 2024-12-11 17:41:17 UTC.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 13 | 3 | 10 |
| 2016 | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 11 | 2 | 9 |
| 2017 | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 8 | 0 | 8 |
| 2018 | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2019 | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2020 | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
From the project README
An excerpt from the repository, fetched Nov 13, 2026.
Read the project’s introduction
Calypso
Calypso is the new WordPress.com front-end – a beautiful redesign of the WordPress dashboard using a single-page web application, powered by the WordPress.com REST API. Calypso is built for reading, writing, and managing all of your WordPress sites in one place.
It’s built with JavaScript – a very light node plus express server, React.js, Redux, wpcom.js, and many other wonderful libraries on the front-end.
Getting Started
You can try out the user-side of Calypso on WordPress.com (a lot of the logged-in area is Calypso; if in doubt, view source), you can poke around the code here on GitHub, or you can install it and run it locally. The latter is the most fun.
Make sure you have git, node, and yarn installed.
Clone this repository locally.
Add 127.0.0.1 calypso.localhost to your local hosts file.
Execute yarn and then yarn start from the root directory of the repository.
Open calypso.localhost:3000 in your browser.
Need more detailed installation instructions? We have them.
Contributing
If Calypso sparks your interest, don’t hesitate to send a pull request, send a suggestion, file a bug, or just ask a question. We promise we’ll be nice. Just don’t forget to check out our CONTRIBUTING doc – it includes a few technical details that will make the process a lot smoother.
Calypso welcomes – and indeed has been built by – contributors from all walks of life, with different backgrounds, and with a wide range of experience. We're committed to doing our part to make both Calypso and the wider WordPress community welcoming to everyone.
You can contribute in many ways. You can help reporting, testing, and detailing bugs, and also test new features we release in our "beta" program for testing on Horizon.
To clarify these expectations, Calypso has adopted the code of conduct defined by the Contributor Covenant. It can be read in full here.
Security
Need to report a security vulnerability? Go to https://automattic.com/security/ or directly to our security bug bounty site https://hackerone.com/automattic.
Our security policy can be read in full here.
Browser Support
We support the latest two versions of all major browsers. (see Browse Happy for current latest versions).
Troubleshooting
If you have any problems running Calypso, please see the most common issues.
License
Calypso is licensed under GNU General Public License v2 (or later).
Read the full README on GitHubWhat Hacker News says
13 sourcesIn A Collection of CSS Tips
Calypso: Wordpress Rewritten in Node.js, React.js, Flux
2 points · Open discussionCalypso: the new WordPress.com front-end in Node.js
1 points · Open discussionSo there are lots of folders and files in their server dir https://github.com/Automattic/wp-calypso/tree/master/server - but from what I can tell they're not doing universal javascript with react running on both client and server.
In The Story Behind the New WordPress.comMy understanding is that the client and server side code is all of the same thing and Node.js is just used to generate the initial page load with the client continuing on from there. I wasn't involved with it's development so I could very well be incorrect.
https://github.com/Automattic/wp-calypso/blob/master/docs/gu...
In The Story Behind the New WordPress.comThe whole project is GPLv2.
https://github.com/Automattic/wp-calypso/blob/master/LICENSE...
I don't have anything against GPL. It just closes a lot of doors for no real reason.
In The Story Behind the New WordPress.com> Wasn't Wordpress.com essentially a multi-user edition of Wordpress the open source project? I am curious if Calypso means fewer releases of the Wordpress project?
I wouldn't expect so. Calypso relies upon WordPress to power the API. Automattic still has a dedicated team devoted to the WordPress project, working alongside the rest of the WordPress community.
> I noticed that some of the docs require a login, for ex: https://wpcalypso.wordpress.com/devdocs/design Anyone know if this is a bug, or part of the new approach?
Good question. Issue filed here: https://github.com/Automattic/wp-calypso/issues/577. I'm not positive, but I think it might be because several of our components require a logged-in user in order to render correctly.
In The Story Behind the New WordPress.comWordPress.com still is a single WordPress install and all of the millions of websites are still generated and powered by PHP and MySQL.
The difference is that rather than using the admin interface that ships with WordPress, we're encouraging usage of this new interface. It still talks to WordPress via a PHP-powered REST API.
In short, it's a new _interface_ for WordPress, not a replacement for WordPress itself.
> https://wpcalypso.wordpress.com/devdocs/design Anyone know if this is a bug, or part of the new approach?
Bug. That's one of our internal staging sites and the devdocs are stripped when pushed out to the production URL.
I've opened an issue for you: https://github.com/Automattic/wp-calypso/issues/577
EDIT: Not private! Just requires a login from any WordPress.com account. There's discussion going on on that ticket to move it some
Read the rest
where that doesn't require a login but it might not be possible.
I don't know if I would call it a framework per se, but absolutely we want to break off individual pieces that can be separately re-used and make them available for everyone. In the meantime if you see something in particular that you're itching for, open a new issue and let us know. You may also want to check out the library of modules here. https://github.com/Automattic/wp-calypso/tree/master/client/...
In The Story Behind the New WordPress.comNever mind the product, look at that list of React components (https://github.com/Automattic/wp-calypso/tree/master/client/...)! Any chance this will become a separate framework?
In The Story Behind the New WordPress.comSorry, my mistake. WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg on his own site describes it more as the project and the "experiment" behind it.
My understanding is this can be used as an interface to all WordPress blogs. My take is that although this is acting through WordPress.com as an API intermediary, it is only steps away from peeling out the whole PHP layer for these interfaces.
WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg described it as:
> At the beginning of last year, we decided to start experimenting and see.
> Today we’re announcing something brand new, a new approach to WordPress, and open sourcing the code behind it. The project, codenamed Calypso, is the culmination of more than 20 months of work by dozens of the most talented engineers and designers I’ve had the pleasure of working with (127 contributors with over 26,000 commits!).
https:/
Read the rest
There are two things here. WordPress.com has been rewritten as a SPA written in React, communicating with the back-end via REST-API. That codebase is now open source for anyone to review and hopefully learn some neat things about scaling a really big React application (or even better, teach us a few things). That codebase is here: https://github.com/Automattic/wp-calypso
Secondly, Automattic has also launched a desktop app (osx for now, but linux and windows forthcoming) that makes use of this new codebase... which is possible now because everything is now going through our REST API.
In The Story Behind the New WordPress.comAutomattic open-sources Wordpress
4 points · Open discussion