All help articlesManage your Flywheel sites with WP-CLI
One of the most useful tools available when it comes to managing WordPress® sites remotely is WP-CLI.1 WP-CLI is a command line interface specifically designed for WordPress. It allows you to update themes and plugins, create users, create posts, and so much more all without ever visiting WP admin.
WP-CLI is available via SSH on all Flywheel sites hosted on our Flywheel Cloud Platform. For information on connecting to your sites via SSH, please read this article.
Table of Contents:
Using WP-CLI
WP-CLI is invoked by typing wp. WP-CLI includes over 40 commands, which can all be viewed here or by simply typing wp. A lot of these commands take subcommands as additional arguments, such as wp user. Typing wp user on its own will list out its available subcommands.
An example of running a command to retrieve a list of users looks like this:
$ wp user list +----+------------+--------------+---------------------------+---------------------+------------------------------+ | ID | user_login | display_name | user_email | user_registered | roles | +----+------------+--------------+---------------------------+---------------------+------------------------------+ | 1 | admin | Trevan | [email protected] | 2013-02-01 18:43:29 | administrator,backwpup_admin | +----+------------+--------------+---------------------------+---------------------+------------------------------+
Warning
Keep in mind, many WP-CLI commands are destructive, meaning there’s no undo function. Luckily, it’s easy to create a site backup first!Handy commands
Now that you see how to run WP-CLI commands, it’s really just a matter of finding the command you want to run to accomplish what you’re looking to do. Here are a few commands that seem to come in most handy!
List all plugins
wp plugin list
Install and activate a plugin
wp plugin install woocommerce --activate
Deactivate a plugin
wp plugin deactivate woocommerce
Reset a user’s password
wp user update [email protected] --user_pass=new-password
Change a user’s role to administrator
wp user add-cap [email protected] administrator
Check the size of database tables
wp db size --tables
Search and replace a string in the database
wp search-replace old new
Delete transients
wp transient delete --all
Generate dummy posts
wp post generate --count=10
Delete all spam comments
wp comment delete $(wp comment list --status=spam --format=ids)
Flush the WordPress cache
wp cache flush
Known commands that won’t work on Flywheel
There are a few WP-CLI commands that you won’t be able to use on Flywheel sites, primarily due to security and permissions restrictions.
- wp config delete
- wp config edit
- wp config has
- wp config set
- wp config shuffle-salts
- wp core update
- wp core verify-checksums
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