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WP-CLI: Work faster, not harder.
Presented at WordCamp Nashville, 2016
Terell Moore
9.17.2016

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A bit about myself
• Operations Engineer at WP Engine
• At WP Engine for 4 years, working with WordPress for 7+
• Uses WP-CLI to manage over 300k WordPress installations
Customer Experience Operations @ WP Engine
Terell Moore

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AGENDA
What is WP-CLI & how do I get it?
WP-CLI on a single installation
WP-CLI via orchestration tools
Q&A
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What is WP-CLI & how do I get it?

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A command line interface for WordPress

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Out of the box
35 Core Commands
Everything from installing a plugin, to clearing WordPress’ transient cache
•Perform database operations
•Import or export site data
•Manage users
•Search & replace
•Manage themes
•& more!

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Installing WP-CLI
From WP-CLI.org
You can download the WP-CLI archive
manually, from WP-CLI.org
● Download the archive
● Save it in a safe place (/usr/local/bin
recommended)
● Make it executable
Via Homebrew
WP-CLI is easily accessible for users of
the homebrew package manager
$ brew install homebrew/php/wp-cli
Via Composer
You can include WP-CLI in your php-
based project, using Composer!
● Just require it in your composer.json
file

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Now what?

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In my opinion, WP CLI’s true power is in it’s
ability to scale past just one WordPress
installation.

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How large organizations use WP-CLI to scale
Using Ansible + WP-CLI, WP Engine was able to roll out
updates in response to a plugin security vulnerability to
10s of thousands of sites.
Core, Plugin, and Theme Updates
WP Engine updated 10s of thousands of sites using
outdated Jetpack, in response to a security
vulnerability
WP-CLI’s useful import/export, and search & replace tooling
enables developers to develop locally.
Additionally, WP-CLI has the ability to perform commands on
a remote target.
Continuous development and maintenance
WP-CLI helps developers develop locally, and maintain
their live sites

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Plugin, Theme, and Core Updates
Updating
Jetpack across
10,000+ installs
WP Engine used Ansible along with
WP-CLI to run critical security
updates for over 10,000 WordPress
installs.
WP-CLI excels when paired with
orchestration software.
WP-CLI has built-in commands to install, update, and delete plugins
and themes.
These commands can be passed via orchestration software to as
many WordPress instances as you have! This enables site
administrators and developers to easily manage a fleet of sites.

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Scale using your orchestration tool of choice
Many different orchestration tools can be used to
scale your use of WP-CLI to many different
WordPress installations.

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WP-CLI can
help developers
develop faster
Continuous Development & Maintenance
The built-in set of commands help
developers to create, update, import,
and export WordPress installs. This
can even be scripted, so developers
can repeat the process often.

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THANK YOU
Terell Moore
@tee_rail