Initial Setup and folder structure (version 1.0)
Initial Setup
Once you have successfully installed MasterPress, it’s highly likely that this is the first thing you’ll see when you visit the “Masterplan” menu item in the dashboard:
(Note that /path/to/your/web/site will be different on your installation, based on the location WordPress is installed in on your server).
In order to function correctly, MasterPress needs its own “mp” folder inside your wp-content folder, to place uploaded files, cached image files, cached menu icons, and other working files.
Changing wp-content folder permissions.
To allow MasterPress to create the mp folder, you’ll need to temporarily change the permissions of the enclosing wp-content folder. This will usually be done via your FTP client when you’re dealing with a remotely hosted WordPress site, but can also be done with the terminal command shown in the warning if you have SSH access to your server or you’re hosting WordPress locally.
Most FTP programs will let you change file permissions by right-clicking on the folder and selecting a command like “Permissions”, or “Get Info”. The screenshot below shows the wp-content folder being given 777 permissions in Transmit on the Mac, by right-clicking the folder and selecting “Get Info”:
Once you’ve applied the new permissions to your wp-content folder, refresh the WordPress dashboard page in your browser and you should see something like the following:
This indicates that MasterPress now has all of the folders it needs. Note the warning to change the permissions of the wp-content directory back to 755, which is less permissive. This is an important thing to do, as it provides better security for your server, and MasterPress will keep showing this message until this step is done. For more detailed information on file permissions in WordPress, please consult the page Changing File Permissions in the WordPress Codex.
Once you’ve changed the permissions back to 755, refresh the page again and you should now see no messages, indicating that everything is now okay.
The “mp” folder in detail
Once MasterPress has completed its initial setup, you should find a folder mp inside your wp-content folder, which contains the following sub-folders:
- extensions/icons – here you can install folders of icon packs, which are used to display an icon selector alongside all icon upload controls throughout the admin interface (e.g. for the Menu Icon field in the Create / Edit Post Type screens).
- extensions/field-types – this folder lets you install your own field types for MasterPress (note: creating a field type is an advanced developer task – documentation for this will be provided sometime in the future)
- file-from-url – The File field type stores files downloaded from a URL in this folder.
- image-cache – MasterPress stores cached versions of processed images in this folder. This is split into 2 sub-folders “admin” and “site” to keep images generated for the admin separate from those for the actual web site.
- image-from-url – The Image field type stores images downloaded from a URL in this folder.
- masterplans – This folder stores any exported or backed up Masterplan packages.
- menu-icons – Used for any icon uploads throughout the interface, and as a location to store the automatic sprite maps that MasterPress builds for your icons.
- mp-cache – This folder holds auto-concatenated CSS and JavaScript files for of all field types, greatly reducing the number of downloads needed to render field type UIs.
- tmp – this is used by the Masterplan export process.
- uploads – All file upload field types use this folder to store their uploads, keeping them separate from the standard WordPress uploads folder. Images and Files are stored in this folder based on the post type or taxonomy they belong to.
Multi-site Setup
MasterPress has been designed to operate smoothly with WordPress multi-site, with your Masterplan being accessible across an entire network of sites.
The setup procedure listed above will differ slightly in a multi-site installation, since the MasterPress content folder is not just a single folder – it is split up into an “mp” folder under wp-content to store all common items for the network, and an “mp” folder under the numbered wp-content/blogs.dir/SITE_ID folders which store content for each site in the network. More specifically:
- wp-content/mp – contains the extensions, masterplans, menu-icons, mp-cache, and tmp folders (see above)
- wp-content/blogs.dir/SITE_ID – contains the file-from-url, image-cache, image-from-url, and uploads folders, which are specific to each site.
You will receive similar warnings as outlined above for the single-site setup – follow the directions in the warnings, and apply the same techniques above for changing permissions where required.