How to configure a server for a Bedrock project

Contents

1. A note about updating a Bedrock project
2. Choosing an install type
3. Configuring your Bedrock server

How to configure a server for a Bedrock project

Bedrock is a popular WordPress project structure. It lets you use WordPress with modern PHP tools like composer. It also follows modern web development practice such as twelve-factor app.

But Bedrock projects also have a unique folder structure that isn't the same as a regular WordPress project. Because of this, you can't use a regular WordPress server installation to host a Bedrock project. This guide will show you how to use DebOps to configure a new server for a Bedrock project.

This guide assumes that you're familiar with how to customize your server. If you don't know how or aren't sure, take a moment to go over this guide first.

A note about updating a Bedrock project

The project folder structure isn't the only unique aspect of a Bedrock project. A Bedrock project also has plugin and theme installation and updating disabled. This includes automatic updates as well.

This means that, once DebOps finishes configuring your server, that's it. Everything will be locked down. You won't be able to install or update plugins, themes or WordPress. You can only update your Bedrock project using composer.

Choosing an install type

Telling DebOps to configure a server for a Bedrock project is quite easy. You only need to set the wordpress__install_type option in the vars.yml customization file of your server. Here's an example vars.yml for a server at ``wordpress.example.com`:

# inventory/host_vars/wordpress.example.com/vars.yml

wordpress__install_type: 'bedrock'

Configuring your Bedrock server

You can't convert an existing WordPress server to use Bedrock. This means that you'll need to configure a brand new server if you want to create a Bedrock server. This means running the standard debops command.

$ debops bootstrap -u root
$ debops
$ debops wordpress