Turning a 5-minutes WordPress installation into a 5-seconds one
Finishing WordPress installations with just two lines
WordPress is among one of the most popular CMS (and for some, framework-like) softwares available out there. Everyday, developers and designers, either by themselves or as part of development shops or marketing agencies, have to setup new installations (or reuse old ones) in other to showcases their progress for their existing customers.
We thought we could give them a bit of help, simplifying that progress and letting them setting up a completely configured and running WordPress environment in a matter of seconds.
For this tutorial, we’ll be using our recently released CodePicnic CLI. Be sure to have it installed if you haven’t already.
A quick view to the Complete Workflow
In this short video you’ll be able to glimpse at the complete process for this short tutorial. Keep reading for a step by step with extra details (though it is really *that* simple).
Creating the console with CodePicnic CLI
With the CLI tool installed, open your Terminal app and run the following command:
codepicnic create -type wordpress -title "A customer site"
In a couple of seconds, you’ll have created a WordPress console, ready to be configured using one of the two URLs presented: one for the console and the other for the Wordpress Welcome Page. We’ll be using the latter one in this tutorial.
Also, I strongly recommend saving the container id because it is going to be useful later in the tutorial.
Configuring your user and get your Wordpress Dashboard
The next step is very simple: Paste the Wordpress URL we just gave you into your browser and it’ll bring you to the “Welcome to Wordpress 5 minutes installation page”.
Once in there, fill in the blanks with your user information just like any other WordPress installation. In my case, I just going to set up my user as admin. And think on how you skipped installing a new account or server just to do so.
Finally, hit the Install Wordpress button and voila! WordPress is up an running in 5 seconds!
A cloud in your pocket
Up until this point, you have been able to create a WordPress console. But what if you want to access your WordPress console from your local computer, and just keep on using your regular tools to edit and update your theme? Let’s get on with it.
Go back to your Terminal app and run the following command:
codepicnic mount YOUR_CONTAINER_ID
Remember when I mentioned you could be wise to save that container id? This is where you are going to need it.
Once you hit enter, the CLI is going to ask you for a Mount Point, meaning that you need to tell the CLI where your console files will live. In the example above, I decided to use the Desktop as the place for my console.
My “Important And Custom Client Site” Theme
With that done, let’s try moving the theme you wanted to showcase to a client. In this example, I’m using a popular 3rd party one, but anyone will work.
As you can see in the image below, I just dropped the files into my
wp-content folder and that’s it. Time to go back to my Wordpress dashboard to activate the theme.
The cherry in the cake is that any changes you make locally will be able to appear almost instantaneously on the cloud version, without you making any other effort than saving the file. A showable, ready-to-use WordPress installation made in seconds. That’s what we’re talking about.
This is just one example of what’s possible thanks to our vision of making remote software accessible from anywhere and with close to no barriers of entry.
Hopefully you’ve enjoy this take, and we’ll meet again soon. Till then, as usual,
Happy Coding!
