Bedrock is a modern WordPress stack that helps you get started with the best development tools and project structure.
Run composer create-project roots/bedrock <path>
(see Installation/Usage for more details)
- Dependency management with Composer
- Automated deployments with Capistrano
- Better folder structure
- Easy WordPress configuration with environment specific files
- Environment variables with Dotenv
- Easy development environments with Vagrant - coming soon!
Bedrock is meant as a base for you to fork and modify to fit your needs. It is delete-key friendly and you can strip out or modify any part of it. You'll also want to customize Bedrock with settings specific to your sites/company.
Much of the philosphy behind Bedrock is inspired by the Twelve-Factor App methodology including the WordPress specific version.
Note: While this is a project from the guys behind the Roots starter theme, Bedrock isn't tied to Roots in any way and works with any theme.
- Git
- PHP >= 5.3.2 (for Composer)
- Ruby >= 1.9 (for Capistrano)
If you aren't interested in using a part, then you don't need its requirements either. Not deploying with Capistrano? Then don't worry about Ruby for example.
See Documentation for more details on the steps below.
Composer's create-project
command will automatically install the Bedrock project to a directory and run composer install
.
The post-install script will automatically copy .env.example
to .env
and you'll be prompted about generating salt keys and appending them to your .env
file.
Note: To generate salts without a prompt, run create-project
with -n
(non-interactive). You can also change the generate-salts
setting in composer.json
under config
in your own fork. The default is true
.
To skip the scripts completely, create-project
can be run with --no-scripts
to disable it.
- Run
composer create-project roots/bedrock <path>
(path
being the folder to install to) - Edit
.env
and update environment variables:
DB_NAME
- Database nameDB_USER
- Database userDB_PASSWORD
- Database passwordDB_HOST
- Database host (defaults tolocalhost
)WP_ENV
- Set to environment (development
,staging
,production
, etc)WP_HOME
- Full URL to WordPress home (http://example.com)WP_SITEURL
- Full URL to WordPress including subdirectory (http://example.com/wp)
- Add theme(s)
- Access WP Admin at
http://example.com/wp/wp-admin
- Set your Nginx or Apache vhost to
/path/to/site/web/
(/path/to/site/current/web/
if using Capistrano)
- Clone/Fork repo
- Run
composer install
- Copy
.env.example
to.env
and update environment variables:
DB_NAME
- Database nameDB_USER
- Database userDB_PASSWORD
- Database passwordDB_HOST
- Database host (defaults tolocalhost
)WP_ENV
- Set to environment (development
,staging
,production
, etc)WP_HOME
- Full URL to WordPress home (http://example.com)WP_SITEURL
- Full URL to WordPress including subdirectory (http://example.com/wp)
- Add theme(s)
- Access WP Admin at
http://example.com/wp/wp-admin
- Set your Nginx or Apache vhost to
/path/to/site/web/
(/path/to/site/current/web/
if using Capistrano)
Using Capistrano for deploys?
Required Gems:
- capistrano (> 3.1.0)
- capistrano-composer
These can be installed manually with gem install <gem name>
but it's highly suggested you use Bundler to manage them. Bundler is basically the Ruby equivalent to PHP's Composer. Just as Composer manages your PHP packages/dependencies, Bundler manages your Ruby gems/dependencies. Bundler itself is a Gem and can be installed via gem install bundler
(sudo may be required).
The Gemfile
in the root of this repo specifies the required Gems (just like composer.json
). Once you have Bundler installed, run bundle install
to install the Gems in the Gemfile
. When using Bundler, you'll need to prefix the cap
command with bundle exec
as seen below (this ensures you're not using system Gems which can cause conflicts).
See http://capistranorb.com/documentation/getting-started/authentication-and-authorisation/ for the best way to set up SSH key authentication to your servers for password-less (and secure) deploys.
- Edit your
config/deploy/
stage/environment configs to set the roles/servers and connection options. - Before your first deploy, run
bundle exec cap <stage> deploy:check
to create the necessary folders/symlinks. - Add your
.env
file toshared/
in yourdeploy_to
path on the remote server for all the stages you use (ex:/srv/www/example.com/shared/.env
) - Run the normal deploy command:
bundle exec cap <stage> deploy
- Enjoy one-command deploys!
- Edit stage/environment configs in
config/deploy/
to set the roles/servers and connection options.
├── Capfile
├── composer.json
├── config
│ ├── application.php
│ ├── deploy
│ │ ├── staging.rb
│ │ └── production.rb
│ ├── deploy.rb
│ ├── environments
│ │ ├── development.php
│ │ ├── staging.php
│ │ └── production.php
│ └── application.php
├── Gemfile
├── vendor
└── web
├── app
│ ├── mu-plugins
│ ├── plugins
│ └── themes
├── wp-config.php
├── index.php
└── wp
The organization of Bedrock is similar to putting WordPress in its own subdirectory but with some improvements.
- In order not to expose sensetive files in the webroot, Bedrock moves what's required into a
web/
directory including the vendor'dwp/
source, and thewp-content
source. wp-content
(or maybe justcontent
) has been namedapp
to better reflect its contents. It contains application code and not just "static content". It also matches up with other frameworks such as Symfony and Rails.wp-config.php
remains in theweb/
because it's required by WP, but it only acts as a loader. The actual configuration files have been moved toconfig/
for better separation.- Capistrano configs are also located in
config/
to make it consistent. vendor/
is where the Composer managed dependencies are installed to.wp/
is where the WordPress core lives. It's also managed by Composer but can't be put undervendor
due to WP limitations.
The root web/wp-config.php
is required by WordPress and is only used to load the other main configs. Nothing else should be added to it.
config/application.php
is the main config file that contains what wp-config.php
usually would. Base options should be set in there.
For environment specific configuration, use the files under config/environments
. By default there's is development
, staging
, and production
but these can be whatever you require.
The environment configs are required before the main application
config so anything in an environment config takes precedence over application
.
Note: You can't re-define constants in PHP. So if you have a base setting in application.php
and want to override it in production.php
for example, you have a few options:
- Remove the base option and be sure to define it in every environment it's needed
- Only define the constant in
application.php
if it isn't already defined.
You will lose the ability to define environment specific settings.
- Move all configuration into
wp-config.php
- Manually deal with environment specific options
- Remove
config
directory
Bedrock tries to separate config from code as much as possible and environment variables are used to achieve this. The benefit is there's a single place (.env
) to keep settings like database or other 3rd party credentials that isn't committed to your repository.
PHP dotenv is used to load the .env
file. All variables are then available in your app by getenv
, $_SERVER
, or $_ENV
.
Currently, the following env vars are required:
DB_USER
DB_NAME
DB_PASSWORD
WP_HOME
WP_SITEURL
You will lose the separation between config and code and potentially put secure credentials at risk.
- Remove
dotenv
fromcomposer.json
requires - Remove
.env.example
file from root - Remove
require_once('vendor/autoload.php');
fromwp-config.php
- Replace all
getenv
calls with whatever method you want to set those values
Composer is used to manage dependencies. Bedrock considers any 3rd party library as a dependency including WordPress itself and any plugins.
See these two blogs for more extensive documentation:
Screencast ($): Using Composer With WordPress
WordPress Packagist is already registered in the composer.json
file so any plugins from the WordPress Plugin Directory can easily be required.
To add a plugin, add it under the require
directive or use composer require <namespace>/<packagename>
from the command line. If it's from WordPress Packagist then the namespace is always wpackagist-plugin
.
Example: "wpackagist-plugin/akismet": "dev-trunk"
Whenever you add a new plugin or update the WP version, run composer update
to install your new packages.
plugins
, and mu-plugins
are Git ignored by default since Composer manages them. If you want to add something to those folders that isn't managed by Composer, you need to update .gitignore
to whitelist them:
!web/app/plugins/plugin-name
Note: Some plugins may create files or folders outside of their given scope, or even make modifications to wp-config.php
and other files in the app
directory. These files should be added to your .gitignore
file as they are managed by the plugins themselves, which are managed via Composer. Any modifications to wp-config.php
that are needed should be moved into config/application.php
.
Updating your WordPress version (or any plugin) is just a matter of changing the version number in the composer.json
file.
Then running composer update
will pull down the new version.
Themes can also be managed by Composer but should only be done so under two conditions:
- You're using a parent theme that won't be modified at all
- You want to separate out your main theme and use that as a standalone package
Under most circumstances we recommend NOT doing #2 and instead keeping your main theme as part of your app's repository.
Just like plugins, WPackagist maintains a Composer mirror of the WP theme directory. To require a theme, just use the wpackagist-theme
namespace.
Composer integration is the biggest part of Bedrock, so if you were going to remove it there isn't much point in using Bedrock.
Capistrano is a remote server automation and deployment tool. It will let you deploy or rollback your application in one command:
- Deploy:
cap production deploy
- Rollback:
cap production deploy:rollback
Composer support is built-in so when you run a deploy, composer install
is automatically run. Capistrano has a great deploy flow that you can hook into and extend it.
It's written in Ruby so it's needed locally if you want to use it. Capistrano was recently rewritten to be completely language agnostic, so if you previously wrote it off for being too Rails-centric, take another look at it.
Screencast ($): Deploying WordPress with Capistrano
You will lose the one-command deploys and built-in integration with Composer. Another deploy method will be needed as well.
- Remove
Capfile
,Gemfile
, andGemfile.lock
- Remove
config/deploy.rb
- Remove
config/deploy/
directory
Bedrock disables the internal WP Cron via define('DISABLE_WP_CRON', true);
. If you keep this setting, you'll need to manually set a cron job like the following in your crontab file:
*/5 * * * * curl http://example.com/wp/wp-cron.php
- Add Vagrant
- Solution for basic database syncing/copying
Everyone is welcome to help contribute and improve this project. There are several ways you can contribute:
- Reporting issues (please read issue guidelines)
- Suggesting new features
- Writing or refactoring code
- Fixing issues
- Replying to questions on the forum
Use the Roots Discourse forum to ask questions and get support.