I’m more of a Network Monkey, but whenever I can provision something just using an ssh session I smile. Many hosts use WP-CLI already and I’ve installed it on my VPS too.

This morning I wrote up a small script to go to my test vhost directory and did the following.

  • Install a blank WordPress site
  • Update some settings
  • Fix my user display name
  • Make sure the plugins and themes are up to date (Akismet needed an update)
  • Delete the default post and page
  • Install, activate and configure the Wapuuvatar plugin
  • Install and activate the Baskerville theme
  • Imported the Theme Unit Test data
  • Cleaned up after the import
  • Used search and replace to make all my http URLs into https

All this was performed without using a mouse or web GUI. (Okay, I checked the avatar setting via /options.php, but I didn’t have to.)

Here’s the script with sensitive details changed.

#!/bin/bash
cd /my/notsecret/www/vhosts/bang.dn7.me

# Setup a new WordPress installation

wp core download

wp core config --dbname=tothemoon \
--dbuser=testuser \
--dbpass=3c962761afbf9ab40a2e75346809c8cf

wp core install --admin_user=jan \
--admin_password=Rea11y*ot7y^assWiRd \
--admin_email=example@example.com \
--url=bang.dn7.me \
--title="Bang! Boom! Pow!"

# Update some options and my account info

wp option update blogdescription \
"What could possibly go wrong?"
wp option update comment_moderation 1
wp option update comments_notify 0
wp option update moderation_notify 0
wp option update comment_whitelist 0
wp user update 1 --first_name="Jan" \
--last_name="Dembowski" \
--display_name="Jan Dembowski"

# Make sure plugins and themes are all up to date

wp plugin update --all
wp theme update --all

# Clean up the default post and page

wp post delete 1 --force
wp post delete 2 --force

# Wapuuvatar is cool. Install, activate
# and set to the default avatar

wp plugin install wapuuvatar --activate
wp option update avatar_default dwapuuvatar

# Let's play with the Baskerville theme

wp theme install baskerville --activate

# Now to import the theme unit test data

wp plugin install wordpress-importer --activate

curl -O https://wpcom-themes.svn.automattic.com/demo/theme-unit-test-data.xml

wp import theme-unit-test-data.xml --authors=create

# Clean up in aisle seven

wp plugin deactivate wordpress-importer
wp plugin delete wordpress-importer
rm theme-unit-test-data.xml

# My test site is also TLS so I'll fix 
# all the things to point to the encrypted URL

wp search-replace http://bang.dn7.me https://bang.dn7.me

# All done

I previously dropped the test installation’s database and created a new empty one. A quick “rm -rf *” (which wise people never do) in the right vhost directory and I ran “bash install-bang.sh”.

It works like a charm. Smart web hosts can and do tie WP-CLI into their provisioning setup. I happened to setup my vhost with TLS and mysql in advance but with a little backend work this can be easily automated.

If you have a test server to play with then give WP-CLI a try. You’ll get a better understanding of both WordPress and the command line.