Theme views are never resolved on a fresh install: `themes/` vs `public/content/themes/`

[ogorzalka]

Summary

On a fresh composer create-project pollora/pollora install, the front-end is broken out of the box:

View [home] not found.

The theme ships at themes/default/ with resources/views/home.blade.php present, and WordPress reports default as both template and stylesheet. But pollora:theme:status shows:

✗ No self-registered theme found
✗ No active theme found via ThemeService

WordPress theme info:
  Stylesheet: default
  Template Directory: /var/www/html/public/content/themes/default

public/content/themes/ only contains .gitkeep. WordPress looks for the theme where Pollora did not put it, so the view path is never added to Laravel's view finder — only resources/views is registered.

Two separate causes

1. config/theme.php ships with 'active' => null

pollora:install sets the theme as active on the WordPress side, but Pollora's own config stays null, so ThemeService has no active theme.

2. use_default_wp_theme_directory is a dead config key

config/wordpress.php declares it:

'use_default_wp_theme_directory' => false,

but it is read nowhere in the codebase:

$ grep -rn "use_default_wp_theme_directory" vendor/pollora/ --include="*.php"
vendor/pollora/framework/config/wordpress.php:59:    'use_default_wp_theme_directory' => false,

The only hit is the declaration itself. Setting it to true changes nothing.

Workaround

# 1. activate the theme on Pollora's side
sed -i "s/'active' => null,/'active' => 'default',/" config/theme.php

# 2. make the theme visible where WordPress looks for it
ln -s ../../../themes/default public/content/themes/default

After that, pollora:theme:status reports the theme in sync and the front-end returns 200.

Suggestion

Either honour use_default_wp_theme_directory (calling register_theme_directory() with base_path('themes') when false — WordPressThemeAdapter::registerThemeDirectory() already exists and is not called with that config), or have pollora:install set config/theme.php's active key and create the link. As it stands, a fresh install cannot render its own front-end.

Environment

Pollora v13.4.3 · WordPress 6.9.4 · PHP 8.4.20 · Laravel 13.8.0 · DDEV, nginx-fpm

https://claude.ai/code/session_01CtKVtFGujknnYGtcEEJD3x