Introduction & Installation
What is WP-CLI, and why use it?
WordPress Command Line Interface (WP-CLI) is a command line tool for WordPress that can directly interact with the site and manage all aspects of your WordPress site. With this method, you can complete a task by simply typing in a line of code and hitting Enter.
There are possibly two types of WP-CLI commands
- Built-in commands – they are provided by core WP-CLI
- Custom commands – users can create their own commands to perform custom functions.
Once you connect to your site via SSH or open your local terminal, you can enter simple commands to perform a task, which looks like this:
We are updating the WordPress site version here:
Here are various tasks that you can perform from command line:
- Installing and updating WordPress sites, themes, and plugins.
- Activating/deactivating WordPress themes, and plugins
- Managing user creation and their roles, capabilities, and meta.
- Performs basic database operations
- Importing and exporting content
- Managing posts, content, and meta.
- Managing widgets, including adding and moving them within sidebars.
- And so on…
For more information about WP-CLI, you can refer to the WP-CLI Handbook
Installing WP-CLI
There are multiple ways to install WP-CLI. Refer to the Installing handbook page to know more.
Check out this video for basic WP-CLI installation and configuring a website using it.
Ideas to Explore:
- Different methods to log output in WP CLI.
- How to add a command as a subcommand to an already existing command in WP CLI?