Getting Started

Getting Started

This guide will help you get up and running with ShadowORM in minutes.

Quick Start

Step 1: Activate the Plugin

After installation, activate ShadowORM via WordPress Admin or WP-CLI:

wp plugin activate shadow-orm

Step 2: Check System Status

wp shadow status

Expected output:

+------------+-------+----------+------+--------+
| Post Type  | Total | Migrated | Size | Driver |
+------------+-------+----------+------+--------+
| post       | 150   | 0        | -    | -      |
| page       | 25    | 0        | -    | -      |
| product    | 500   | 0        | -    | -      |
+------------+-------+----------+------+--------+

Step 3: Migrate Your Data

# Start with posts
wp shadow migrate --type=post

# Then other types
wp shadow migrate --type=page
wp shadow migrate --type=product

# Or migrate everything at once
wp shadow migrate --all

Step 4: Verify Migration

wp shadow status

After migration:

+------------+-------+----------+--------+--------+
| Post Type  | Total | Migrated | Size   | Driver |
+------------+-------+----------+--------+--------+
| post       | 150   | 150      | 1.2 MB | MySQL8 |
| page       | 25    | 25       | 0.3 MB | MySQL8 |
| product    | 500   | 500      | 5.6 MB | MySQL8 |
+------------+-------+----------+--------+--------+

Using the Admin Panel

Navigate to Settings → ShadowORM to access the admin panel.

Features Available

1. System Status: Enable/disable ShadowORM globally
2. Post Type Management: Toggle shadow tables per post type
3. Migration Status: View how many posts are migrated
4. Sync Actions: Trigger sync or rollback operations

Enabling/Disabling Post Types

In the admin panel, you can:

• Enable shadow tables for specific post types
• Disable shadow tables (falls back to wp_postmeta)
• Sync individual post types

How Your Code Changes

Good news: It doesn't!

ShadowORM is fully transparent. Your existing code continues to work:

// These work exactly the same with ShadowORM
$price = get_post_meta($product_id, '_price', true);
$all_meta = get_post_meta($post_id);

// Updates are synced automatically
update_post_meta($post_id, 'my_field', 'value');

What Happens Behind the Scenes

1. Read Request: get_post_meta() is intercepted
2. Cache Check: RAM cache is checked first
3. Shadow Table: If not cached, data is fetched from shadow table (1 query)
4. Cache Update: Result is stored in RAM cache
5. Return: Value is returned to your code

Performance Testing

Run a quick benchmark:

wp shadow benchmark --type=product --iterations=100

Example output:

Benchmark results for 100 iterations:
  Average: 0.342 ms
  Min: 0.218 ms
  Max: 0.567 ms

Next Steps

• Architecture - Understand how ShadowORM works
• WP-CLI Commands - Full command reference
• Configuration - Advanced configuration options