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Docs / Engine Core

Engine Core

The engine is the runtime container of GoPress. It wires together storage, content repositories, rewrite rules, SEO rendering, hooks, cache, workers, admin routes, API routes, installer routes, and the active frontend theme.

Main Modules

Module Responsibility
core/engine.go Engine lifecycle, route setup, shutdown, and the App surface.
core/bootstrap.go One-call bootstrap orchestration.
core/migrate.go GORM AutoMigrate for core tables.
core/seeder.go Declarative demo data import from TOML.
core/themes.go Theme registry and factory lookup.
core/plugins.go Plugin registry and activation lifecycle.
core/table_registry.go Tracks core, plugin, and theme-owned tables.

Core Types

Core content types such as post, contact_message, category, and tag are registered by the engine and are not owned by any theme. They remain available across theme switches and are used by admin, REST APIs, sitemap generation, and fallback templates.

Theme-specific content types are declared in theme.toml. During activation, the engine reads the active theme metadata and registers those types in the content registry.

A theme content type definition drives more than admin fields. The same registry entry is used for admin navigation, CRUD forms, REST API exposure, rewrite rules, sitemap entries, taxonomy archives, and BaseTheme dynamic archive/detail rendering. rewrite_slug controls the public URL base, while optional templates = { archive = "...", single = "..." } maps a content type to specific page bundles when the template names do not match the content type name.

This means product, service, and showcase are conventional example types, not core requirements. A theme can declare module, project, case_study, or any other type and still receive the same routing/rendering/admin behavior.

Taxonomy archives aggregate content across registered content types. Type badges are localized through the active theme's content_type.<name> locale key and fall back to the registry label when no translation exists. Dynamic content archives also support query-string filtering for taxonomies declared on the content type, such as /blog?category=industry-news or /blog?tag=cleanroom.

Runtime Boundaries

GoPress keeps a strict boundary:

  • Core owns shared services and contracts.
  • Themes own rendering and theme-specific data presentation.
  • Plugins own additive behavior and optional admin settings.

When new features cross this boundary, they should usually become a core hook, a core helper, or a small interface instead of a direct dependency.