README

composer create-project leymannx/wordpress-project some-dir --stability stable --no-interaction

Replace some-dir with whatever directory name you wish.

Usage

Run above command.
Point your vhost to some-dir/web.
Open site in browser and start WordPress installation as usual.

Optionally:

After successful installation move some-dir/web/wp-config.php into some-dir/wp-config/wp-config.php and run composer install once again.
Install leymannx/wp-cli-launcher to let the wp command use this project's some-dir/bin/wp from any location inside the project.

Custom plugins and themes

Custom stuff all goes inside some-dir/wp-custom. There are subfolders for themes and plugins. They will get symlinked automatically into the right location on every composer install run.

wordpress.org plugins and themes

Plugins are added to your project by running composer require wpackagist-plugin/plugin-name and themes by composer require wpackagist-theme/theme-name. You then can enable them normally via WP-CLI or from the backend as usual.

cd some-dir
composer require wpackagist-plugin/wordpress-seo

Update WordPress, plugins and themes

Managing your WordPress site with Composer means you also update it with Composer. And maybe use a plugin like WP Update Settings to disable backend notifications.

composer update --with-dependencies

Recommendations

I strongly recommend to use WP-CFM to synchronize your WordPress configuration across all environments. After you activated the plugin you may want to have the config exported to/imported from some-dir/wp-config/cfm. So place the following code into a custom mu-plugin under some-dir/wp-custom/mu-plugins/some-file.php and run composer install once to have it symlinked into the right location.

<?php
/*
  Plugin Name: Custom CFM config directory
  Description: Override default CFM config location.
  Version: 1.0
*/

// Override wp-cfm configuration directory.
add_filter('wpcfm_config_dir', function () {
  return dirname($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT']) . '/wp-config/cfm';
});
add_filter('wpcfm_config_url', function () {
  return dirname($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT']) . '/wp-config/cfm';
});

After you've set up your initial config in the backend you can export changes into some .json file(s) anytime either from the backend by running wp config push some-config. From now on it's as easy as putting the following commands into your deployment routine to have these changes synced across all environments.

../bin/wp plugin activate wp-cfm
../bin/wp config pull some-config

Why?

Why another Composer template for WordPress? Well, at the time of writing this I found all other templates out there either too bloated or too minimalistic. I wanted to have a template that devides custom code and contrib code into dedicated locations (like in Drupal) and then have everything tied together into an absolutely normal WordPress.

And I wanted to be able to simply delete the whole some-dir/web folder and then just run composer install to have everything up and running again. Try it out yourself. That's a good feeling. With this template you shouldn't need to ever actually put a foot into the some-dir/web folder.

I achieved that by using symlinks that get created/removed automatically as post-install-cmd and post-update-cmd commands from Composer. It's a pitty that WordPress doesn't come with its own composer.json.

Why Composer at all? Because it sucks to have the whole monolithic codebase of WordPress pushed into a repo when all you really need are some few custom files whereas everything else should be just another dependency to pull.

leymannx / wordpress-project

Maintainers

Details