Drift Website releasesself-updates

The Airtable-powered site engine behind the Drift App Suite by Drift Creative Systems. Clients edit their content in Airtable and press Publish; their WordPress site updates.

The first product is Encore (band and artist sites). Each product is a map file plus a theme. The engine is shared.

• Requires: WordPress 6.2+, PHP 8.0+, OpenSSL. ACF Pro is needed for the Setup Wizard's modules.
• Repo: https://github.com/drift-creative-systems/drift-website
• Self-updates from GitHub releases (bundled Plugin Update Checker, checked every 6 hours).

How it works

1. Each client has their own Airtable base, duplicated from the product's template base (docs/ENCORE-AIRTABLE-BASE.md).
2. Drift → Connection holds the base ID, an encrypted token and the product.
3. The client ticks Publish in Airtable. The automation (docs/airtable-publish-automation.js) stamps the time and POSTs to /wp-json/drift/v1/publish.
4. The site queues a background sync. Every table in the map is read (about 1 API call each) and written into normal WordPress posts, meta, terms, media and one settings option. Templates read WordPress data and never call Airtable.
5. A daily safety check reads one field and re-syncs only if a publish was missed.

Admin

Drift (agency users only, once one exists) has these tabs:

• Connection: credentials, product, webhook URL and secret, and a schema check against the map.
• Sync: last run, API usage this month against the budget, Sync now / Full resync, and the activity log.
• Content: which table goes where, and the current site settings.
• White Label: admin bar, footer, login screen, and which menus clients see.
• Setup Wizard: creates the product's pages with modules pre-filled and builds the Main Menu.

The admin bar also has Sync from Airtable for editors.

Theme API

drift_setting( 'name' );                       // synced site setting
drift_setting_image( 'logo', 'medium' );       // <img> for an image setting
drift_linked_posts( get_the_ID(), 'tracks' );  // linked records, Airtable order
drift_form_hidden_fields( 'enquiry' );         // inside a form posting to admin-ajax.php
drift_last_synced();

Synced post meta is plain WordPress meta (get_post_meta( $id, 'gig_date', true )), so ACF's get_field() works on it too.

wp-config.php options

define( 'DRIFT_WEBSITE_AIRTABLE_BASE', 'appXXXXXXXXXXXXXX' );  // overrides the screen
define( 'DRIFT_WEBSITE_AIRTABLE_TOKEN', 'pat…' );               // overrides the screen
define( 'DRIFT_WEBSITE_KEY', 'long-random-string' );            // encryption key (defaults to WP salts)
define( 'DRIFT_WEBSITE_GITHUB_TOKEN', 'github_pat_…' );         // only if the repo is private

Releasing

1. Bump Version: and DRIFT_WEBSITE_VERSION in drift-website.php, and add a CHANGELOG.md entry.
2. Commit and push to main.
3. Build the zip: python tools/build-zip.py writes dist/drift-website.zip with a drift-website/ top folder, lib/ included and .git, tests/, tools/ and dist/ left out.
4. Create a GitHub release tagged vX.Y.Z with that zip attached. Sites see it in Dashboard → Updates within 6 hours, or straight away with "Check again" on the Plugins screen. The zip must be attached: release-assets mode is on, so plain source archives are ignored.

Docs