feat(sirius-press): a WordPress where the account is a key, not a mailbox
WordPress makes two assumptions this project cannot accept: that identity
comes from an email address, and that a site lives at one server. Both are
things somebody else can take away — a mailbox is rented from a provider who
can close it or be compelled to open it, and a server is one seizure from
being gone.
Sirius Press replaces the first and hedges the second.
Signing in means signing a challenge with the key that controls a CashAddress.
The address is recovered from the signature, so nothing is typed but the
signature itself, and the result is an ordinary WordPress session cookie —
roles, capabilities, nonces and the REST API never learn the login was
different. Three ways to produce one: a wallet the browser already exposes, a
phrase used once in the page and wiped, or a signature pasted in from any
BIP-137 wallet, which needs no JavaScript and lets the key stay on a machine
that never touches the web.
There is no password reset, and the recovery page says so plainly rather than
offering a form that cannot work. A reset mechanism is by construction a way
to take an account from its owner, and it is always easier to attack than the
cryptography it bypasses.
Publishing a post also exports it as static HTML to the name's storage on Sia,
signed by the key that owns the name, so the site keeps answering when the
server does not.
Email as a feature is untouched. wp_mail() still works, SMTP still sends, and
contact forms still deliver to addresses real people typed. Only mail to the
site's own unroutable placeholder addresses is diverted to an in-app inbox.
The objection was to email as identity, not to email.
Core is pinned and patched rather than vendored. WordPress 7.1.1 is 149 MB and
5,008 files; the fork's entire core diff is 75 lines in wp-admin/install.php.
Carrying the former to express the latter would bury the patch where nobody
reviews it and make every clone of the monorepo pay for it. Upstream releases
still merge through tools/update-wordpress.sh, which reapplies the series and
says exactly which hunk needs a human.
The cryptography is implemented twice — PHP on the server, JavaScript in the
page — because the server must verify and the browser must sign. Both are
pinned against libauth, the library the Sirius portal wallet and the BNS
gateway already use, so a disagreement of one byte fails the test suite rather
than presenting as a rejected login at three in the morning.
132 checks, no framework, about a second.
2026-09-21 01:39:38 +02:00
|
|
|
# Sirius Press — copy to .env and edit before the first `docker compose up`.
|
|
|
|
|
#
|
|
|
|
|
# install.sh writes this file for you with generated passwords. Doing it by
|
|
|
|
|
# hand is fine too; just do not leave the passwords below as they are.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
# --- database ---------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
|
# These are read once, when MariaDB initialises its data directory. Changing
|
|
|
|
|
# them later does not change the database — it just stops the app connecting.
|
|
|
|
|
DB_NAME=wordpress
|
|
|
|
|
DB_USER=wordpress
|
|
|
|
|
DB_PASSWORD=change-me
|
|
|
|
|
DB_ROOT_PASSWORD=change-me-too
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
# --- the site ---------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
|
# The URL visitors reach this instance on. Set it once the name's `p` or `ip`
|
|
|
|
|
# record points here; leaving it blank lets WordPress guess from the request,
|
|
|
|
|
# which is fine for a first run on an IP address.
|
|
|
|
|
SITE_URL=
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
# Port nginx publishes on the host. Put 8080 here if something else already
|
|
|
|
|
# owns 80 and you are running a reverse proxy in front.
|
|
|
|
|
HTTP_PORT=80
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
WP_DEBUG=false
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
# --- the publishing key ------------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
|
# What the site's recovery phrase is encrypted with at rest. Generated on first
|
|
|
|
|
# start if left blank, and then kept in the config volume.
|
|
|
|
|
#
|
|
|
|
|
# Worth setting explicitly and keeping a copy somewhere safe: if this value is
|
|
|
|
|
# lost, the stored phrase cannot be decrypted and has to be entered again.
|
|
|
|
|
# It is not the phrase itself and is useless without the database.
|
|
|
|
|
SIRIUS_PRESS_KEY=
|
|
|
|
|
|
build(sirius-press): build from the vendored subtree instead of a download
The subtree is in place, so everything that used to fetch and patch core at
build time now just copies it.
tools/build.sh copies wordpress/ — no download, no checksum step,
because there is nothing to fetch and nothing to
trust that is not already in the repository
docker/Dockerfile COPY wordpress/ instead of curl + sha256 + patch;
the build args and the `patch` package are gone
docker-compose.yml no WP_VERSION / WP_URL / WP_SHA256 to keep in step
tools/update-wordpress.sh is rewritten around what the subtree makes
possible. It imports the pristine release onto sirius-press/wordpress-upstream
and then `git subtree merge`s that branch, which three-way merges upstream
against the fork's own commit. A patch either applies with fuzz and hopes or
fails and leaves you re-deriving the change by hand; a merge conflict is
resolved once, in the file, and the next release merges against the
resolution.
patches/ survives as documentation rather than mechanism, and is now
generated: tools/refresh-patches.sh diffs the subtree against the pristine
import and rewrites the directory, with --check for CI. It answers the
question anyone auditing a fork asks first — what exactly did you change
inside WordPress? — in a minute, which `git log wordpress/` cannot, because
that log is mostly upstream imports. Generated documentation stays true; a
hand-maintained record of a core diff drifts, and a stale one is worse than
none because people trust it.
One test change worth noting: the syntax sweep no longer walks all of
wordpress/. It lints the fork's own PHP plus every core file patches/ says
the fork touches, which keeps the suite at seven seconds instead of a minute
while still covering the only core file that can break.
2026-09-21 03:19:28 +02:00
|
|
|
# WordPress itself is vendored in the repository (wordpress/) and baked into
|
|
|
|
|
# the image, so there is no version or checksum to configure here. See
|
|
|
|
|
# docs/upstream-merges.md for how a new upstream release gets in.
|