Installation

In this section you will find how to install the framework and get started with it. It might look long because there are some considerations to explain, but in most cases it's just matter of writing three lines of code.

Requirements

SCI WP Framework makes use of many WordPress components, so the base requirements for the latest SCI WP version are usually the same as the latest major WordPress version. However you will need to make sure that your server meets the following requirements before installing the framework:

  • PHP >= 7.2

  • WordPress >= 5.0

There are also some web server considerations you will need to take for the framework to work properly. Check the server configuration section for more details.

Installation

The installation of SCI WP Framework will not take you more than one or two minutes. The easiest way yo install SCI WP is to install the official WordPress Plugin. However you can also bundle the framework as part of your Plugin. Check here how to bundle it.

How to Install

Here are the steps you need to follow to install SCIWP into your WordPress website:

  1. The first thing you need to do is to download the SCIWP WordPress plugin from here.
  2. Then extract the directory inside the zip file and place it into your WordPress plugins folder.
  3. Rename the directory to sciwp. In case you don't rename it, the plugin will try to rename its folder when you enable it for the first time.

And that's all. Once the plugin is enabled from he WordPress interface, you can start using with with your plugins.

Let's see an example of how you can start using it with a plugin. The next code should be placed into your plugin's main file:

namespace MyPlugin;
 
use Sci\Plugin\Plugin;
# We just create the plugin and register it
$plugin = Plugin::create(__FILE__)->register('my-plugin');

However, we can place some additional code to check for the presence of the SCIWP plugin first, in case it doesn't throw an error if it's not enabled:

namespace MyPlugin;
use Sci\Plugin\Plugin;
require_once( ABSPATH . '/wp-admin/includes/plugin.php' );
# Check if the framework is active
if (!is_plugin_active('sciwp/main.php')) {
    # Deactivate the current plugin and throw an advice with a button to go back
    deactivate_plugins(__FILE__);
    wp_die(
        'MVC WP Framework Plugin is required',
        'Error', 
        array( 'response'=>200, 'back_link'=>TRUE )
    );
}
# Create the plugin and register it
$plugin = Plugin::create(__FILE__)->register('my-plugin');

How to Bundle

You can bundle the framework with a new WordPress plugin or with an existing plugin you have created. The installation process is similar.

If you are creating a new plugin, start by creating a new directory for it into the \wp-content\plugins folder. For example: \wp-content\plugins\my-wplugin. Then follow these steps:

  1. You first need to download the SCIWP WordPress plugin from here.
  2. Open the downloaded zip file and extract the included folder to your desktop or any other directory.
  3. Open the extracted directory and simple copy the framework directory into the root folder of the plugin you want to use with the framework. For example if your plugin is in the folder my-plugin, the framework should be located at the \wp-content\plugins\my-plugin\framework folder.

After installing the framework, you still need to configure the Plugin to use it:

If you are bundling the framework with a new plugin, you can just use the SCI WP Boilerplate template. To use the template, download the latest template release from here and then extract the downloaded file contents into the \wp-content\plugins\my-plugin directory, as per our example.

If you are not using the boilerplate, just edit the main file of your plugin, where you will define the WordPress plugin name and the plugin description. This file is usually located in the root folter of your plugin. Then you just need add the next two lines of code to this file:

# Define the namespace
namespace MyPlugin;
use MyPlugin\Sci\Plugin\Plugin;
# Start the framework assuming the plugin file is  in the root folder of your plugin
include plugin_dir_path(__FILE__) . 'framework/run.php';
# Create a new Plugin and register it into the Plugin Manager
Plugin::create(__FILE__)->register();

As you can see, we first define the namespace MyPlugin for the file. The namespace specified in this file will be the base namespace for the Plugin. However, it's possible to use a different one by just defining a namespace in the main file of the plugin.

Please note: If you bundle the framework with your Plugin, you should append your plugin namespace to the Sci framework components. For example, you would reference the MyPlugin\Sci\Plugins\Plugin class instead of the Sci\Plugins\Plugin class.

That's all you need to start. To activate the plugin, just access the WordPress administration panel and activate it as usually. However, there are some considerations described in the Server Configuration section below you might need to take before activating your Plugin.

When the Plugin is activated for the first time, the namespace for all the internal framework files will be configured so they use the current plugin root namespace. Doing this, we to avoid problems with plugins created by other users which may use a different instance of the framework.

Server Configuration

In general, you will not need to make the changes explained in this section. However, it's worth to read this information before enabling your Plugin.

Directory Permissions

After installing the framework, you may need to configure some permissions so the framework is able to replace the included default namespace for the one you have configured. At least, directories within the ..\sciwp folder should be writable by your web server, as otherwise the framework might experience problems.

The default base namespace for the framework files is MyPlugin. If you get write permission errors when activating your Plugin, you will need to open the .../sciwp framework directory with an editor like Notepad++, VS Code or Sublime and find and replace all occurrences of the string MyPlugin\ with the base namespace you want to configure.

Please Note: SCI WP can also replace the namespaces in your code if the rebuild_code option in the config.php file is enabled. If the option is enabled and you get write permission errors , you will need to grant permissions to all the files inside the root folder of your plugin or manually replace the base namespace in all the files to match the one you want.

Pretty Permalinks

Your web server must accept pretty permalinks so you can create new routes. The pretty permalinks configuration varies for different web servers.

For Apache

Before any configuration, make sure that the mod_rewrite module is enabled in Apache. Once enabled, you can switch on pretty permalinks in WordPress by acessing the Permalinks option in the WordPress administration panel. If the routes are not still working, try to add the next configuration to the .htaccess file located in the root directory of your WordPress installation as an alternative:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>

For Nginx

If you are using Nginx, you need to add the following directive to the configuration file of your website:

location / {
    try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$query_string;
}

Once applied this configuration, both WordPress and SCI WP will be able to process new routes and permalink structures.

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