WordPress Development
and Deployment Strategies

David McDonald
November 13, 2013

http://www.dmcweb.com.au/wpmelb

I'm always looking for ways to optimise my workflow. Here are some strategies I have found to do that.

Most require some familiarity with a shell & the command line
Code in these slides uses OS X shell, but they should work on any *nix shell with minimal mods
Hope you find some of them useful

1. Dynamic virtual hosts on localhost

Useful when running multiple local websites.

Enables automatic creation of websites
Uses wildcard subdomains on localhost eg: http://website.localhost
No more fiddling with virtual hosts and your host file for every new local website

Creating a new website is as easy as adding a folder to your webserver root.

The virtual hosts are created automatically.

http://blog.evan.pro/how-to-set-up-dynamic-virtual-hosts-for-web-development

http://akrabat.com/computing/automatic-apache-vhosts/

How to set up:

Install dnsmasq & setup. Easiest install is to use homebrew:

brew install dnsmasq

Modify your vhosts.conf file:

<VirtualHost *:80>

VirtualDocumentRoot /Users/[myusername]/Sites/%1/

ServerAlias %1.*
UseCanonicalName Off

<Directory "/Users/[myusername]/Sites">
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks Includes ExecCGI MultiViews
</Directory>

</VirtualHost>

Edit your Network preferences and add 127.0.0.1 above any other DNS server entries

Shell script that completely automates the set up of a WordPress install.

Chooses a theme framework if required
Sets up wp-config and wp-config.local files
Creates the site database
Downloads any plugins you have specified
Creates a git repo with an initial commit

To create a new WordPress site, copy the conf folder into your new site folder, then run:

wpbuildr [sitename]

How to set up:

Clone from github: https://github.com/AaronHolbrook/wpbuildr

git clone https://github.com/AaronHolbrook/wpbuildr.git [mydirectory]

Follow instructions there and customise as needed.

Some of the wpbuildr forks and pull requests are interesting to look at for ideas.

Are plugins installed in the `mu-plugins` directory inside the `wp-content` folder and which are automatically enabled on all sites in the installation.

Do not show in the list of plugins in WP admin
Are always enabled
They cannot be disabled in the WP admin
Are loaded before normal plugins

Useful examples of mu-plugin use:

If the client has admin access, they cannot accidentally delete a plugin
You may not want clients to see certain plugins, such as custom post types plugins
Good for all the 'helper' functions you use from site to site, but the client doesn't need to see

Caveat: mu-plugins are not checked for updates by WP's auto update

http://codex.wordpress.org/Must_Use_Plugins

4. WordPress Deployment with git post-receive hooks

Deploy Wordpress sites easily.

Deploy to specific servers using SSH aliases
Uses a bare git repo with a post-receive hook
No git files in ~/public_html
A little work to setup (less than capistrano), but then makes deployment simple

To deploy a site to the testing server:

git push test

To deploy a site to the live server:

git push live

Set up on the local site:

Set up an SSH alias for the site: in ~/.ssh/config:

Host website-l
Hostname www.website.com.au
user gituser

Set up on the remote site:

Set up a bare git repo and the post-receive hook:

mkdir website.git && cd website.git
git init --bare
cat > hooks/post-receive
#!/bin/sh
GIT_WORK_TREE=~/www/wp-content/themes/[my theme name] git checkout -f
chmod +x hooks/post-receive

Back on the local site:

Add a remote repo:

git remote add live website-l:~/website.git
git push live +master:refs/heads/master

The remote repo lives in the ~/ of website-l, so it's not accessible to the world

The post-receive hooks pushes the bare files to ~/www/wp-content/themes/[my theme name]

All the above can be scripted as part of setting up a new site, using wpbuildr.

I found the concept at http://toroid.org/ams/git-website-howto

WordPress Development
and Deployment Strategies

I'm always looking for ways to optimise my workflow. Here are some strategies I have found to do that.

1. Dynamic virtual hosts on localhost

Useful when running multiple local websites.

How to set up:

2. wpbuildr

Shell script that completely automates the set up of a WordPress install.

How to set up:

3. Must Use Plugins

Are plugins installed in the `mu-plugins` directory inside the `wp-content` folder and which are automatically enabled on all sites in the installation.

Useful examples of mu-plugin use:

4. WordPress Deployment with git post-receive hooks

Deploy Wordpress sites easily.

Set up on the local site:

Set up on the remote site:

Back on the local site:

Thank you!

WordPress Development and Deployment Strategies

I'm always looking for ways to optimise my workflow. Here are some strategies I have found to do that.

1. Dynamic virtual hosts on localhost

Useful when running multiple local websites.

How to set up:

2. wpbuildr

Shell script that completely automates the set up of a WordPress install.

How to set up:

3. Must Use Plugins

Are plugins installed in the mu-plugins directory inside the wp-content folder and which are automatically enabled on all sites in the installation.

Useful examples of mu-plugin use:

4. WordPress Deployment with git post-receive hooks

Deploy Wordpress sites easily.

Set up on the local site:

Set up on the remote site:

Back on the local site:

Thank you!

WordPress Development
and Deployment Strategies

Are plugins installed in the `mu-plugins` directory inside the `wp-content` folder and which are automatically enabled on all sites in the installation.