How we built the DEV3 Aurum: a finance WordPress theme with a scroll-driven 3D story

DEV3 Aurum is a WordPress theme for wealth managers, advisors and accountants. Its home page is a scroll-driven 3D story rendered live in WebGL.

Stack: a classic PHP theme with theme.json, on a shared DEV3 theme core and the DEV3 Theme Toolkit plugin, with Elementor, block editor and WooCommerce support.

Decisions that mattered

• The coins, growth chart, glass ribbons, globe and vault dial are three.js scenes built in code, so there are no licensed renders or stock photos.
• The story has five stops. Each stop is an Elementor container with the 3D chapter setting on, and state keys such as grow, draw and lock let editors tune the scene.
• Calculators (loan, compound growth, retirement) are plain HTML with a data-aurum-calc attribute that the theme hydrates in the browser. Nothing is stored or sent, and the script loads only where a calculator exists.
• The engine probes the device and picks a quality tier. Phones get a lighter preset, and reduced-motion, Save-Data and no-WebGL visitors get a still poster while text stays in the HTML.
• The ticker and testimonials carry "Sample data" badges.

Limits: there is no public live demo, only a one-click demo import into your own WordPress.

Number from our checks: the engine size budget is about 217 KB gzip.

Feedback on the progressive-enhancement approach is welcome.