Early access

Early access: try it on a site of your own.

BookPress serves WordPress sites from its own server, with the same themes, the same /wp-admin and the same URLs. It works, it is fast, and it still has defects. We sell it now to people who want it early and tell us what breaks.

Who it is for

You run your own server, a VPS or a machine at home. You have a blog, a side project or a copy of a client site, and you like to try things. You read a changelog.

Who it is not for yet

A WooCommerce shop that earns your living. Parts of WooCommerce do not work yet, and a shop that takes orders is the wrong place to find out which. Put a copy of the shop on BookPress and look at it there. The same goes for any site whose hour of downtime costs you money.

The way back

Import leaves your WordPress and its database untouched. One command takes the site back:

wp bookpress export --dir=<wp-root>

You can keep the WordPress running beside BookPress for as long as you like. The hosts page shows both commands with their output.

What does not work yet

• The block Cart page does not show cross-sell suggestions yet.
• Plugin updates are not offered unless the server operator turns on the update check.
• Plugin and theme zip uploads larger than 16 MB are refused; copy a larger plugin folder into /var/lib/bookpress/wp-content/plugins/ (a theme into /var/lib/bookpress/themes/) as the bookpress user.
• Persistent object-cache, page-cache and database drop-ins (object-cache.php, advanced-cache.php, db.php) are not loaded; BookPress serves without them, and Site Health names each one it finds. A must-use plugin that fails the compatibility check is named in Site Health and not loaded.
• The REST API index lists every plugin route as WordPress does. WordPress's own wp/v2 routes carry WordPress's argument descriptions, defaults and enums for every field this engine accepts, generated from a captured WordPress 7.0.2. A narrower term and taxonomy query shape and a few resource-specific args (status, sticky, format, registered meta keys) are not advertised yet.
• A server that cannot reach account.bookpress.io gets its licence from "Add a machine by ID" on the account page (paste the output of bookpress --machine-id) and keeps the file at /var/lib/bookpress/bookpress.license.
• Every user signs in again once after the import. The importer says so.
• Mail leaves only through a mail relay you configure. Until then contact forms and password resets send nothing; the installer and the importer say so when a plugin sends mail.
• The Customizer and the Site Editor need a WordPress install on disk beside BookPress. Bundled patterns are not listed and there is no changeset autosave.
• Multisite is not supported.
• Themes install from wordpress.org in wp-admin and have no update flow yet.
• Image editing covers crop, rotate by quarter turns, flip and scale, for JPEG and PNG.
• Plugins that run PHP code typed into wp-admin (Code Snippets, WPCode) install, but their snippets do not run: BookPress refuses eval at run time.
• BookPress checks every plugin before it can activate, and certifies, limits or refuses it. A refused plugin comes back named, with the file and the line it would fail on.

This list is for BookPress 0.2.57. A point leaves it with the release that fixes it.

Latest release: BookPress 0.2.70.

The live demo runs WooCommerce and Elementor on BookPress. Your own login is shown when you start your sandbox; try to break it.

What you buy

A licence for one site, for $1€0.85 a month. The price is net; VAT is added where it applies. Cancel any time; nothing upgrades by itself. Early access licences are not refunded. A licence that runs out never stops your site serving.

Run bookpress login once on the server. It prints a code and a link to account.bookpress.io/device; approve the code there while signed in to your account. The licence is bound to that machine and renews itself. A machine without a licence keeps serving and prints [bookpress] no licence at /var/lib/bookpress/bookpress.license. Run: bookpress login at every start. The licence file download on the account page is now an admin path.

Start for $1€0.85

For more than one site, talk to us.

When something breaks

Write to [email protected] with the page, the plugin and what you saw. BookPress updates itself, so a fix reaches your server with the next release.