v1.0.0 Free on WordPress.org · 5.9+

Build it once. Keep it perfect.

DesignLock snapshots your design tokens — colors, fonts, spacing, typography, plugin versions — and tells you the moment something drifts. So you catch it. Not your client.

$0Free & open source
5.9+WordPress version
7.4+PHP version
DailyAutomated scans
The Problem

A site stays pixel-perfect for about three weeks.

You spend weeks crafting the brand. You hand it off. A plugin auto-updates. The client edits something. Three weeks later, the colors are off, the heading font shifted, and a section looks broken — and you're the one who hears about it.

You build the site. Pixel-perfect typography. A locked color palette. You hand it off. Everyone is happy. Then a plugin auto-updates. A token gets overwritten. A client tweaks something. And the brand quietly drifts — until someone notices.
Day 0
Launch

Pixel-perfect handoff. Health Score: 100.

Day 9
Plugin updates

Page builder ships v3.21. theme.json values silently overwritten.

Day 14
Client tweaks brand color

Hex shifts from #143D32 → #1E5A47. No one notices.

Day 21
A heading switches font

System fallback rendering. Score drops to 64.

Day 28
You get the call

"Hey, the site looks weird?" Now you're scrambling.

What It Watches

Six layers of your design system, monitored continuously.

DesignLock reads directly from theme.json and global styles, so every token that defines your brand is on the watchlist.

Color Palette

Primary, secondary, and accent colors from theme.json, watched hex by hex.

Font Families

Every registered font family in your theme — and every fallback that swaps in.

Typography Scale

The full scale from xs to xxl. Catches it when a plugin nudges your h2 by 2px.

Spacing Tokens

Global spacing presets and gap values — the rhythm of your layout, watched.

Plugin Versions

Every active plugin and its version. So when something drifts, you know why.

Global Styles

Block editor global styles and overrides — the patterns shared across every page.

Five tools, one quiet promise

Lock the design. Then walk away.

DesignLock fingerprints your live design system, then sits in the background watching for changes — across themes, plugins, blocks, editors, and global styles.

01 — Design Baseline

A snapshot of "correct."

One click captures every color, font, spacing token, plugin version, and global style as it should be. Future scans get measured against this fingerprint — not guesses, not vibes.

  • Reads theme.json + WordPress core registries
  • Captures plugin versions, block presets, global style variations
  • Re-baseline anytime after an intentional design update
02 — Drift Detection

Every change, surfaced.

The scanner compares the current state against your baseline and flags every difference — sorted by severity so you fix what matters first.

  • Critical — primary brand colors, core typography
  • High & Medium — secondary tokens, spacing, scales
  • Low — minor presets and edge cases
03 — Design Health Score

A single number. No drama.

Every scan rolls into one score from 0–100. Glance at it on the dashboard, send it to a client, watch it trend over time. You'll know if the system is holding without reading a single line of CSS.

  • Weighted by token importance — color > spacing > preset
  • Trend line across last 30 scans, not just today
  • Exportable for client reports and care-plan check-ins
04 — Client Lock Mode

Hand them the keys. Keep the gate.

Toggle Client Lock and your client can still publish, edit, and update — but the design tokens themselves stay frozen. No more "we tweaked one color" turning into a four-hour audit.

  • Independent per-token toggles — lock colors, leave fonts free
  • Subtle nudge in the editor when a locked token is touched
  • Reversible by the developer in two clicks
05 — Scan History

Receipts. For everything.

Every scan, every change, every fix — timestamped and stored. When a client asks "what changed last Tuesday?", you don't guess. You open the log.

  • Full diff view — what changed, when, and against which baseline
  • Filter by severity, layer, or date range
  • Export-ready for care-plan reports and post-launch reviews
Built for the people who'll actually use it

If you ship WordPress, this is for you.

Freelancers

Hand off sites without losing sleep. When the client "fixes" something, you'll see it before they tell you.

Agencies

Standardize design QA across every project. One dashboard, every client site, zero spreadsheets.

Care-Plan Devs

Turn drift reports into deliverables. Every scan becomes proof that your monthly retainer is doing real work.

Site Owners

You don't speak CSS. You shouldn't have to. DesignLock translates "something looks off" into a fixable list.

How it works

Four steps. No setup theater.

No API keys. No external services. No accounts. The plugin runs entirely inside your WordPress admin and reads what's already there.

01

Install the plugin

Search "DesignLock" in your WordPress plugin directory, or upload the .zip. Free, forever.

02

Activate & baseline

One click captures the current design state — colors, fonts, tokens, plugins, presets — as the source of truth.

03

Run your first scan

Get a Health Score and a clean list of any drift. Fix or accept each item, then re-baseline.

04

Sit back

Run scans on a schedule or before every handoff. The plugin watches so you don't have to.

Will it work with Elementor / Divi / page builders?
DesignLock monitors WordPress core design data — theme.json, global styles, plugin versions, and registered tokens. If your page builder writes tokens into those layers (most do, increasingly), they're tracked. Pure builder-only styles that bypass the WordPress design system aren't part of the baseline today.
Does scanning slow my site down?
No. Scans run inside the WordPress admin, on demand or on a schedule you set. Visitors never see them, and there's no front-end overhead. The plugin doesn't load assets on public-facing pages.
What happens the moment I activate it?
Nothing destructive. DesignLock adds a dashboard menu item and waits. You decide when to capture your first baseline — until then, it's idle. Your live site is untouched.
Can I reset the baseline after a redesign?
Yes — that's the expected workflow. Whenever you intentionally change the design system (rebrand, redesign, theme swap), re-baseline in one click. Future scans measure against the new fingerprint.
Is my data secure? Does anything leave my site?
All data — baselines, scan history, drift logs — stays inside your WordPress database. No external services, no API calls to third parties, no telemetry. The plugin works fully offline-capable installs.
Is it really free? What's the catch?
It's genuinely free on the WordPress plugin directory. No paywalls, no "lite" tier, no required upgrade. Built and maintained by independent developers because design-system drift is a problem that deserves a free, honest fix.
Free · Open source · No account required

Build it once. Keep it perfect.

Install DesignLock and capture your first baseline in under sixty seconds. The next time something drifts — and something will — you'll be the first to know.

WordPress 5.9+ PHP 7.4+ GPLv2 licensed No external services