Twelve-Factor WordPress App

This is the introduction to a 12 part series for turning a WordPress site into a Twelve-Factor App.

If you aren’t familiar with the Twelve-Factor App: it’s a methodology created by Heroku for building web apps (they know a thing or two about building complex software).

The methodology is all about codifying the best practices for building web apps with the main goal of improving work on a growing codebase.

Despite WordPress’ humble beginnings as a blogging platform, it’s quickly evolved into a full-fledged CMS used for massive projects. Development methodologies in the WP community haven’t evolved as much unfortunately. If you’re going to be creating complex websites with WordPress, then you need to get serious about it.

Adhering strictly all to twelve factors with WordPress is almost impossible. What we can do is get about 80% of the way there without too much trouble. The series will be WP specific as much as possible. That means you should take the time to read the original because they do a better job of explaining the base methodologies better than I ever could.

In case you’re curious, this idea was taken from a similar post written about Drupal.

The Twelve Factors

1. Codebase
2. Dependencies
3. Config
4. Backing Services
5. Build, release, run
6. Processes
7. Port binding
8. Concurrency
9. Disposability
10. Dev/prod parity
11. Logs
12. Admin processes