Installation

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 8.3 or higher
• Composer 2.x
• MySQL 5.7+ / MariaDB 10.3+ / SQLite
• 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. The current release is v13.32.0-beta.2, built on Laravel 13.32.

Because it is a pre-release, Composer never selects it by default: a plain composer create-project pollora/pollora still installs the last stable release (v13.4.0). The commands below ask for the beta explicitly.

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. 13.32.0-beta.2, ^13.32@beta)
--stable	Install the latest stable release instead of the latest pre-release

pollora new installs the latest release including pre-releases, so you get v13.32.0-beta.2 today. Pass --stable to stay on the last stable release, or --ver to pin an exact version.

2. Composer create-project

composer create-project "pollora/pollora:^13.32@beta" example-app

The @beta flag is what allows Composer to pick the current pre-release. To install the last stable release instead, drop the constraint:

composer create-project pollora/pollora example-app

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

2. 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!