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Introduction

Sloth is a polymorphic WordPress application framework. It brings Laravel patterns — Dependency Injection, Service Providers, Facades, Eloquent, Events, Cache — into WordPress, without requiring the full Laravel stack.

The word polymorphic is deliberate: Sloth adapts to how your project is structured, rather than enforcing a fixed directory layout.

Two modes​

Classic mode​

The application lives outside the theme. A shared app/ directory holds models, APIs and business logic that are independent of any theme. The WordPress theme handles presentation only.

Bootstrapping happens via Cecropia, a must-use plugin that boots Sloth before WordPress loads any theme.

Use this mode when you want a clean separation between application logic and theme — or when multiple themes share the same business logic.

Starter: folivoro/folivoro

Theme mode​

Everything lives inside the theme. Sloth is bootstrapped directly in functions.php.

Use this mode when you're delivering a standalone theme — a simpler setup with no dependencies outside the theme directory.

Starter: folivoro/theme

Installation​

The fastest way to get started. The starters set up the full directory structure, environment configuration and bootstrapping for you.

Classic mode:

composer create-project folivoro/folivoro my-project

Theme mode:

composer create-project folivoro/theme my-theme

Place the theme in wp-content/themes/ and activate it in the WordPress admin.

Without a starter​

Theme mode — add Sloth to an existing theme:

composer require folivoro/sloth

Then bootstrap in functions.php:

use Sloth\Core\Application;

Application::configure(basePath: __DIR__)->boot();

Classic mode — add Sloth and Cecropia to an existing WordPress project:

composer require folivoro/sloth
composer require folivoro/cecropia

Cecropia has type wordpress-muplugin and will be placed automatically if your project uses Composer installer paths. If not, copy cecropia.php manually to wp-content/mu-plugins/.

Requirements​

  • PHP 8.4 or higher
  • WordPress 5.0 or higher
  • Composer 2.0 or higher

How Sloth detects the mode​

Pass the base path explicitly — no guessing needed:

// Theme mode — __DIR__ is the theme root = App-Root
Application::configure(basePath: __DIR__)->boot();

// Classic mode — explicit App-Root
Application::configure(basePath: __DIR__ . '/app')->boot();

If no basePath is passed, Sloth resolves the App-Root automatically:

  1. SLOTH_BASE_PATH constant — must be defined before WordPress bootstraps, used as-is
  2. Walk up from ABSPATH until a composer.json outside vendor/ is found → Classic mode → App-Root = ${project}/app/
  3. Fall back to get_template_directory() → Theme mode → App-Root = theme directory

In both modes, all auto-discovered classes (Model/, Module/, Providers/ etc.) and storage/ live relative to the App-Root.

Environment​

Both modes use a .env file for environment-specific configuration:

WP_ENV=local
WP_HOME=https://my-project.test
WP_SITEURL=https://my-project.test/cms

DB_NAME=my_project
DB_USER=root
DB_PASSWORD=
DB_HOST=localhost

APP_SECRET=a-long-random-string

WP_ENV controls the environment. Use local for local development — development, develop and dev are also accepted for backwards compatibility. Anything else is treated as production. Use testing when running tests.

Next steps​