Goal
Add external plugins or themes from the official directory to your Wordpress installation using composer.
Assumptions
- A WordPress installation on Platform.sh that uses Composer, for example one that uses the WordPress Template.
- An SSH key configured on the project account
- Composer installed locally
Problems
Since Platform.sh deploys the code read-only (and thus makes many Wordpress sites more secure by default), the integrated mechanism to add and update both plugins and themes doesn’t work.
Luckily, wpackagist.org mirrors the WordPress plugin and theme directories as a Composer repository. This means you can add all plugins and themes covered by the directory using composer.
Steps
1. Add the external repository
Edit your composer.json file and add wpackagist as a repository.
"repositories":[
{
"type":"composer",
"url":"https://wpackagist.org"
}
],
2. Add a plugin or theme via composer
You can use composer require to add a plugin or a theme as a dependency. For plugins, use wpackagist-plugin as the vendor name, for themes use wpackagist-theme.
Examples:
Plugin: composer require wpackagist-plugin/cache-control
Theme: composer require wpackagist-theme/neve
Composer will update your composer.json and composer.lock files accordingly.
3. Push to your repository
By pushing those changes to Platform.sh, the build process will automatically install the themes and plugins in the right folder.
git add composer.json composer.lock
git commit -m 'adding themes/plugins'
git push
4. Enable plugins/themes in the WP-Admin Dashboard
The admin interface will show the plugins/themes and will allow you to enable them directly via the interface.
Conclusion
By using composer to install 3rd party plugins and themes, you get a reliable build process and make sure the code is deployed safely. This avoids committing plugins and themes into your git repository.
It also makes it easy to keep plugins and themes up to date. You can follow this guide on how to keep your Wordpress site updated.