Deploy

Layout on the server

wp-content/
  themes/site-builder-theme/      <- theme/
  plugins/site-builder-listings/  <- plugin-listings/
  mu-plugins/site-maintenance.php <- deploy/site-maintenance.php (optional)
site.config.php                    <- one level above the theme; NOT in the repo

functions.php looks for site.config.php beside the theme directory and falls back to site.config.example.php. Keeping the real config outside the theme means a theme update cannot overwrite the business details.

Order of operations

1. Upload the theme and activate it.
2. Upload and activate the listings plugin. Activation seeds taxonomy terms from SB_LISTING_TYPES / SB_LISTING_BRANDS.
3. Upload site.config.php.
4. Flush permalinks — Settings → Permalinks → Save. Without this the listing archive and single pages 404, and it looks like a broken deploy when it is only unregistered rewrite rules.
5. Create the pages whose slugs match page-<slug>.php.
6. Upload images to theme/assets/images/.

Maintenance mode

deploy/site-maintenance.php is a must-use plugin that shows a holding page to logged-out visitors while leaving the site fully usable for administrators. Drop it in mu-plugins/ to enable, remove it to disable. There is no setting — that is deliberate, so it cannot be left on by accident.

Importing a catalogue

deploy/import-home-models.php takes a JSON array and creates listings idempotently, matching on slug so a re-run updates rather than duplicates.

wp eval-file deploy/import-home-models.php path/to/listings.json

Run it against staging first. The schema is documented in the file header.

Before every deploy

find . -name "*.php" -exec php -l {} \; | grep -v "No syntax errors"
grep -rn "\[[A-Z][A-Za-z ]*\]" theme/
git status --short

Placeholder copy reaching production is the most common failure here, and it is silent — the page renders perfectly, it just says [Your positioning line].