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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.
6.1 KiB
Installing Sirius Press
Three ways in, depending on what you have. All of them end at the same place: a WordPress site where accounts are wallets and every page is mirrored to your BCNR name.
A VPS, with Docker (recommended)
On a fresh Ubuntu 22.04 or 24.04 box:
curl -fsSL https://silentmode.st/sirius-press/install.sh | sudo bash
It installs Docker from the distribution's own packages if it is missing,
clones the repository to /opt/sirius-press, generates database passwords and
a SIRIUS_PRESS_KEY, builds the image and starts the stack. Then it waits
until the site answers and prints the setup URL.
About five minutes on a 1 GB VPS, nearly all of it compiling PHP extensions.
If you would rather read the script before running it as root — a reasonable
instinct — it is install.sh, and it is about a hundred lines.
By hand, if you prefer
git clone https://code.silentmode.st/silentmode/sirius-press.git /opt/sirius-press
cd /opt/sirius-press/docker
cp .env.example .env
# edit .env: set DB_PASSWORD and DB_ROOT_PASSWORD at minimum
docker compose up -d --build
Finishing setup
Open http://your-server/wp-admin/install.php.
The screen is the usual WordPress one with a single change: where it asked for your email, it asks for your wallet address. You can paste one or leave it blank and attach a wallet afterwards from your profile — which is actually the better order, because the profile screen makes you prove the address by signing, and the installer cannot.
Set a password too. It is the only way into the site until a wallet is attached, and you should turn it off afterwards (Sirius Press → Sign-in).
Shared hosting
Download sirius-press-<version>.zip from
the releases page,
check it against the published .sha256, and upload its contents the way you
would upload WordPress — because that is what it is, patched, with the plugins
already in place.
Then create a database and run through wp-admin/install.php.
Before you start, confirm the host gives you GMP or BCMath. Without one of them the fork cannot verify a signature and refuses to activate. Most hosts have BCMath; ask for GMP if you can get it, since it is roughly twenty times faster and signature verification sits on the login path.
Building the zip yourself
tools/build.sh --zip
Downloads the pinned WordPress, verifies its SHA-256, applies patches/, adds
the plugins, and writes dist/sirius-press-<version>.zip alongside its
checksum.
An existing WordPress site
Sirius Press can be added to a site you already run, without the core patch. You lose only the setup-wizard change, which you have already been through.
- Copy the four directories in
plugins/intowp-content/plugins/. - Copy
mu-plugins/sirius-press-bootstrap.phpintowp-content/mu-plugins/(create the directory if it does not exist). - Activate Sirius Press Core first, then Auth, Publishing and Compatibility.
- Attach a wallet to your own account at Users → Profile.
- Turn passwords off at Sirius Press → Sign-in — but read the list of accounts without wallets on that screen first. Every one of them is somebody who will be locked out.
Existing accounts keep working with passwords until each attaches a wallet. Nothing is migrated, deleted or rewritten.
Pointing your name at it
See bcnr-records.md. The short version: set your name's
ip record to the server's address, or its p record to a hostname that
resolves there.
After it is up
Three things, in this order:
- Sirius Press → Settings: set the BCNR name this site publishes under, and the network (mainnet or chipnet).
- Users → Profile: attach your wallet by signing. Check the address that appears is the one you expect.
- Sirius Press → Sign-in: turn off password sign-in once every account that needs access has a wallet.
Then decide how exports get signed — see publishing.md. The default is manual, meaning nothing sensitive is stored on the server and you sign from your browser when you publish.
Upgrading
cd /opt/sirius-press
git pull
cd docker && docker compose build && docker compose up -d
Core, the fork's plugins and the patch series all come from the image, so this
upgrades all three. Your uploads, your database, your other plugins and themes,
and wp-config.php live in volumes and are untouched.
This is why the document root is refilled from the image on every start rather than being a volume of its own — the usual WordPress-in-Docker layout pins core at whatever version first created the volume, and turns every security release into a manual migration.
When it does not work
The site does not answer.
cd /opt/sirius-press/docker && docker compose logs -f app. The most common
cause on a first run is the database still initialising; the entrypoint waits
sixty seconds and then starts anyway, so give it another minute.
"Sirius Press needs either the GMP or the BCMath PHP extension."
The host has neither. Nothing in the fork works without one. On Debian or
Ubuntu outside Docker: apt install php-gmp && systemctl restart php-fpm.
Signing in does nothing, and no error appears. JavaScript did not load, or the page is being served over plain HTTP where WebCrypto is unavailable. Open "Paste a signature instead" and use any wallet — that path needs no JavaScript at all.
"That signature does not match the text this site asked you to sign." Usually the challenge was copied without its trailing blank line, or with a line wrapped. Copy it straight out of the box with the copy button rather than selecting it by hand.
Exports fail with "the stored publishing key is not the address that currently owns this name." The phrase on the server derives a different address than the one holding the name's NFT. Sirius Press → Settings shows both side by side. The usual cause is a wallet created on a different derivation path — see publishing.md.