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Getting Started with Pollora

Welcome to Pollora! This guide will help you get a working installation up and running. Pollora is a WordPress framework built on top of Laravel — it replaces WordPress's frontend templating with Laravel's Blade engine while keeping WordPress's full backend (admin, database, plugins).

Requirements

  • PHP 8.4 or higher (the skeleton's composer.lock ships Symfony 8, which requires it)
  • Composer 2.x
  • MySQL 5.7+ or MariaDB 10.3+ (WordPress is loaded only on the mysql driver; SQLite is not supported)
  • Node.js and NPM (for theme asset bundling)
  • DDEV (optional, for a ready-made local environment)

Current release

Pollora's version numbers follow the Laravel release it is built on, so the current line is 13.34, built on Laravel 13.34.

Two packages carry that number: pollora/pollora, the skeleton create-project installs, and pollora/framework, which the skeleton requires. They are tagged together, and a skeleton tag pins the framework tag of the same number in its composer.lock — which is what create-project installs from, whatever constraint the composer.json carries. So one version number describes an install completely.

The current release is v13.34.1, a stable release: a plain composer create-project pollora/pollora installs it.

Installation Methods

Pollora offers two ways to create a project:

  1. The Pollora CLI (recommended)
  2. Composer create-project

Both end up running the same interactive setup, which you can also run by hand.

1. Pollora CLI

Install the CLI globally once:

composer global require pollora/cli

Make sure Composer's global vendor/bin directory is in your PATH — composer global config bin-dir --absolute prints it. Then create a project:

pollora new example-app

Or let the CLI provision a full local environment with DDEV (recommended):

pollora new example-app --ddev

With --ddev, the CLI configures DDEV (WordPress project type, PHP 8.4, MariaDB 10.11), starts it, installs the project inside the container, writes the database credentials to .env, and runs the WordPress installation. Your site is then available at https://example-app.ddev.site.

CLI options

Option Description
--ddev Set up the project with DDEV
--force, -f Force install even if the directory already exists
--git Initialize a Git repository
--branch=NAME Branch name for the new repository (default: main)
--ver=VERSION Install a specific version or constraint (e.g. 13.34.0, ^13.34)
--stable Install the latest stable release instead of the latest pre-release

pollora new installs the latest release including pre-releases: today that is the stable v13.34.1, and a beta published after it would be picked up. Pass --stable to never get a pre-release, or --ver to pin an exact version.

2. Composer create-project

composer create-project pollora/pollora example-app

Composer picks the latest stable release. To try a pre-release, ask for it explicitly, e.g. "pollora/pollora:^13.34@beta".

Either command will:

  1. Create a new Pollora project
  2. Install all dependencies
  3. Automatically launch the LaunchPad setup process

During the setup, you'll be prompted for:

Environment Configuration (pollora:env:setup)

  • Site URL: Your site's URL (e.g., https://example.com)
  • Database Configuration:
    • Host (default: localhost)
    • Port (default: 3306)
    • Database name
    • Username
    • Password

The system will test the database connection. If it fails, you'll have the option to retry with different credentials.

WordPress Installation (pollora:install)

  • Site Information:
    • Site title
    • Site description
    • Language selection (searchable list of available languages)
  • Admin Account:
    • Username
    • Email
    • Password (minimum 8 characters)
  • Search Engine Visibility:
    • Option to allow or prevent search engine indexing
  • Theme: the name of the theme generated from pollora/theme-default (defaults to default)

Running the setup manually

If you prefer to run the installation steps yourself — or need to re-run them — use the following Artisan commands:

# Configure environment
php artisan pollora:env:setup

# Install WordPress
php artisan pollora:install

These commands guide you through the same interactive setup as the automatic installation.

Non-Interactive Installation

For automated deployments, CI/CD pipelines, or scripted setups, you can bypass the interactive prompts by passing all required options directly:

php artisan pollora:install \
    --title="My Site" \
    --description="A Pollora-powered site" \
    --admin-user=admin \
    --admin-email=admin@example.com \
    --admin-password=secretpassword \
    --locale=en_US \
    --public=true \
    --theme=default

Available options:

Option Description
--title Site title
--description Site description
--admin-user Admin username
--admin-email Admin email address
--admin-password Admin password (min. 8 characters)
--locale Site locale (e.g. en_US, fr_FR)
--public Allow search engine indexing (true or false)
--theme Name of the theme to generate (defaults to default)
--install Suppress informational output for automated runs

Any option that is omitted will trigger its corresponding interactive prompt. This means you can mix CLI options and prompts — for example, provide the title and admin credentials via options while being prompted for language selection.

Web-based Installation

If you prefer the traditional WordPress installation interface, you can:

  1. Run the environment setup:
php artisan pollora:env:setup
  1. Once the .env file is configured, visit your site's URL and follow the WordPress installation wizard.

Post-Installation Verification

After successful installation:

  1. Start the development server: php artisan serve (or, with DDEV, just open https://example-app.ddev.site)
  2. Access your site at the configured URL
  3. Access your WordPress admin panel at: your-site-url/wp-admin
  4. Verify you can log in with the admin credentials you configured

For post-installation configuration (WordPress settings, environment variables, development environments), see the Configuration guide.

Heads up! Pollora rids WordPress of frontend responsibilites altogether, this means theme support in WordPress is dropped completely. Don't worry though, any functions you can run in vanilla WordPress you can run in Pollora!

See also