WordPress
Welcome to the WordPress development repository! Please check out the contributor handbook for information about how to open bug reports, contribute patches, test changes, write documentation, or get involved in any way you can.
- Getting Started
- Credentials
Getting Started
Local development
WordPress is a PHP, MySQL, and JavaScript based project, and uses Node for its JavaScript dependencies. A local development environment is available to quickly get up and running.
You will need a basic understanding of how to use the command line on your computer. This will allow you to set up the local development environment, to start it and stop it when necessary, and to run the tests.
You will need Node and npm installed on your computer. Node is a JavaScript runtime used for developer tooling, and npm is the package manager included with Node. If you have a package manager installed for your operating system, setup can be as straightforward as:
- macOS:
brew install node
- Windows:
choco install nodejs
- Ubuntu:
apt install nodejs npm
If you are not using a package manager, see the Node.js download page for installers and binaries.
Note: WordPress currently only officially supports Node.js 20.x and npm 10.x.
You will also need a container environment such as Docker Desktop installed and running on your computer. The container environment is the virtualization software that powers the local development environment and can be installed just like any other regular application.
Note: WordPress currently only officially supports Docker but several container environments are available and should generally be compatible, such as Colima, OrbStack, Podman Desktop, and Rancher Desktop.
Development Environment Commands
Ensure your container environment is running before using these commands.
To start the development environment for the first time
You can get started using the local development environment with these steps:
- Go to https://github.com/WordPress/wordpress-develop and fork the repository to your own GitHub account.
- Then clone the forked repository to your computer using
git clone https://github.com/<your-username>/wordpress-develop.git.
- Navigate into the directory for the cloned repository using
cd wordpress-develop.
- Add the origin repo as an
upstream remote via git remote add upstream https://github.com/WordPress/wordpress-develop.git.
- Then you can keep your branches up to date via
git pull --ff upstream trunk, for example.
Alternatively, if you have the GitHub CLI installed, you can simply run gh repo fork WordPress/wordpress-develop --clone (docs). This command will:
- Fork the repository to your account (use the
--org flag to clone into an organization).
- Clone the repository to your machine.
- Add
WordPress/wordpress-develop as upstream and set it to the default remote repository
After this, remember to run cd wordpress-develop.
Once you have forked and cloned the repository to your computer, run the following commands in a terminal:
npm install
npm run build:dev
npm run env:start
npm run env:install
Your WordPress site will be accessible at http://localhost:8889. You can see or change configurations in the .env file located at the root of the project directory.
To watch for changes
If you're making changes to WordPress core files, you should start the file watcher in order to build or copy the files as necessary:
npm run dev
To stop the watcher, press ctrl+c.
To run a WP-CLI command
npm run env:cli -- <command>
WP-CLI has many useful commands you can use to work on your WordPress site. Where the documentation mentions running wp, run npm run env:cli -- instead. For example:
npm run env:cli -- help
To run the tests
These commands run the PHP and end-to-end test suites, respectively:
npm run test:php
npm run test:e2e
You can pass extra parameters into the PHP tests by adding -- and then the command-line options:
npm run test:php -- --filter <test name>
npm run test:php -- --group <group name or ticket number>
To run the JavaScript (QUnit) tests:
npm run grunt qunit:compiled
qunit:compiled builds first, then runs the suite. The QUnit runner loads
scripts from the built build/ directory, so a plain npm run grunt qunit
requires a completed npm run build first without a build, every test fails
with a jQuery is not defined error.
To lint the workflow files
GitHub Actions workflows operate in a privileged software supply chain environment, therefore all workflow files must adhere to a high degree of quality and security standards.
All YAML workflow files within the .github/workflows directory are statically scanned when modified using Actionlint and Zizmor. It's recommended that you install both of these tools locally using a package manager to run prior to submitting changes to workflow files.
- Actionlint installations instructions
- Zizmor installation instructions
To run Actionlint:
actionlint
To run Zizmor for all workflow files (note the trailing period):
zizmor .
Note: A workflow run failure will not occur when issues are detected by Zizmor. Instead, the generated report is submitted to GitHub Code Scanning and surfaced through a status check. Some locally reported issues may be ignored based on the repository's configured Code Scanning settings.
Generating a code coverage report
PHP code coverage reports are generated daily and submitted to Codecov.io.
After the local container environment has been installed and started, the following command can be used to generate a code coverage report.
npm run test:coverage
The command will generate three coverage reports in HTML, PHP, and text formats, saving them in the coverage folder.
Note: xDebug is required to generate a code coverage report, which can slow down PHPUnit significantly. Passing selection-based options such as --group or --filter can decrease the overall time required but will result in an incomplete report.
To restart the development environment
You may want to restart the environment if you've made changes to the configuration in the docker-compose.yml or .env files. Restart the environment with:
npm run env:restart
To stop the development environment
You can stop the environment when you're not using it to preserve your computer's power and resources:
npm run env:stop
To start the development environment again
Starting the environment again is a single command:
npm run env:start
Resetting the development environment
The development environment can be reset. This will destroy the database and attempt to remove the pulled container images.
npm run env:reset
Apple Silicon machines and old MySQL/MariaDB versions
Older MySQL and MariaDB container images do not support Apple Silicon processors (M1, M2, etc.). This is true for:
- MySQL versions 5.7 and earlier
- MariaDB 5.5
When using these versions on an Apple Silicon machine, you must create a docker-compose.override.yml file with the following contents:
services:
mysql:
platform: linux/amd64
Additionally, the "Use Rosetta for x86/AMD64 emulation on Apple Silicon" setting in your container environment (if applicable) needs to be disabled for this workaround.
Credentials
These are the default environment credentials:
- Database Name:
wordpress_develop
- Username:
root
- Password:
password
To login to the site, navigate to http://localhost:8889/wp-admin.
- Username:
admin
- Password:
password
Note: With Codespaces, open the portforwarded URL from the ports tab in the terminal, and append /wp-admin to login to the site.
To generate a new password (recommended):
- Go to the Dashboard
- Click the Users menu on the left
- Click the Edit link below the admin user
- Scroll down and click 'Generate password'. Either use this password (recommended) or change it, then click 'Update User'. If you use the generated password be sure to save it somewhere (password manager, etc).
