An important “non-news” for WordPress site developers. Have you heard about the command-line utility called “wp-cli”? I’ve been working with WP for a long time, but only found out about it about six months ago.
wp-cli is an amazing tool for developers who manage a bunch of WP sites on their local machine (and not just local ones). Wp-cli allows you to work with WordPress via the command line, minimizing the time you spend on installing the engine, updating it, as well as installing and updating themes and plugins for it.
To be honest, I haven't explored all of its features deeply, but I'll describe the basic functionality and capabilities.
Installation
All instructions are provided for Linux OS.
Download the phar archive with the utility to your machine:
curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wp-cli/builds/gh-pages/phar/wp-cli.phar
Set execute permissions:
chmod +x wp-cli.phar
Move the file to your system’s program directory (to access it from anywhere):
sudo mv wp-cli.phar /usr/local/bin/wp
How to check if it works? Run the following command in the console:
wp --info
And if everything is installed correctly, you'll see something like this:
PHP binary: /opt/lampp/bin/php-5.5.19 PHP version: 5.5.19 php.ini used: /opt/lampp/etc/php.ini WP-CLI root dir: phar://wp-cli.phar WP-CLI vendor dir: phar://wp-cli.phar/vendor WP_CLI phar path: /www/cms-free/wordpress/test WP-CLI packages dir: WP-CLI global config: WP-CLI project config: WP-CLI version: 1.4.0
Commands
Check the installed version of WP. Go to the directory where WP is installed and enter:
wp core version --extra
Installing WordPress takes just three commands:
1. Download the core with the required locale:
wp core download --locale=ru_RU
2. Before installing the site, you need to create a “wp-config.php” file by renaming “wp-config-sample.php” and setting your database credentials. Then run:
wp core install --url=example.com --title=Development --admin_user=admin --admin_password=qweqwe --admin_email=admin@example.com
where:
--url — site URL
--title — site title
--admin_user — admin username
--admin_password — admin password
--admin_email — admin email
In just a few seconds, WP will be installed!
To update WordPress core:
wp core update
Themes and Plugins
View installed plugins and themes:
wp plugin list wp theme list
Update all plugins and themes:
wp plugin update --all wp theme update --all
Install the WooCommerce plugin and the TwentyTwelve theme:
wp plugin install woocommerce wp theme install twentytwelve
Populate the site with test posts from loripsum:
curl http://loripsum.net/api/5 | wp post generate --post_content --count=10
As you can see, it’s all pretty simple and fast. The main thing is to get started. Thank you!