TL;DR: We recommend VVV, along with the WordPress Meta Environment addon. At the bottom of the page you can find some dockerized environments, which are more up to date than VVV, to work in some sections of worpress.org.
The basic requirement is to have a local web server on your machine that you can run WordPress on. There are a number of different ways to do that; MAMP, WAMP, XAMPP, etc. The problem with those solutions is that they can be difficult to set up, especially if you want to run more than one copy of WordPress.
Another way to run a local web server is to install a virtual machine that runs independently of your desktop or Laptop OS. Again, there are a number of solutions, both free and paid. The solution we recommend is VirtualBox and Vagrant. This combination allows you to create virtual environment much closer to a real web server, and have it automatically set up everything, including WordPress, correctly for you.
The full solution we recommend is one called VVV, along with the WordPress Meta Environment addon. You can find detailed setup instructions for both projects on their homepages. If you run into any problems setting them up, feel free to ask for help in the #metaMeta Meta is a term that refers to the inside workings of a group. For us, this is the team that works on internal WordPress sites like WordCamp Central and Make WordPress. channel on Slack.
Dockerized environments
Below you can find some dockerized environments to work in some sections:
- WordPress.org News
- WordPress.org Parent Theme
- WordCamp.org
- WordPress Theme Directory: https://wordpress.org/themes/
- WordPress.org Pattern Directory: https://wordpress.org/patterns/
- WordPress Learn: https://learn.wordpress.org
- WordPress Development Docker Images
- WordPress.org repo tools
- WordPress Theme Check Action
- WordPress.org Internal Notes plugin
- Revisions Extended
- Block Directory Block Health Check
- Health Check
- Openverse API
- Openverse Catalog
- Openverse Frontend
- Gutenberg
9 responses to “Setting Up Your Machine”
Have you considered a similar tutorial for setting up an environment with Docker? I’m not planning to light up a rant, just sharing my hope for seing an alternative around, as Vagrant is pretty popular with it’s odd behaviour on some environments + being really slow, which is kind’a strange on a local machine…
What is the password for the admin user when logged into these dev environments? I cannot get in with admin/admin
admin/password It in the Read.me file for vvv
Can’t I just use my Desktop Server Pro?
As long as you have a local installation of WordPress running, yes you can.
Just a note that can help somebody troubled. It’s something pretty straightforward but it can make you loose some time. If you decide to install it on Windows 7, you will need to run the CMD with admin privileges. Otherwise it will fail to write the hosts file and the install will always fail. You will still see the virtual machine but you won’t be able to run it.
On Windows 8.1, the combination of VirtualBox 4.3.10 and Vagrant 1.5.4 didn’t work. During setup, it failed with several obscure error messages.
What worked instead was VirtualBox 5.0.0 and Vagrant 1.7.4.
Hello, I would like to use VVV but I dont know how to install it. Does anyone has a video tutorial link? I have VirtualBox and Vagrant installed in my mac but I can’t understand what VVV is for and how to install it. Thanks in advance.
Hi @rosinaaa, VVV works in conjunction with VirtualBox and Vagrant, so you need all three. VVV has some detailed setup instructions on their repository homepage, but if you run into any problems, feel free to drop a question in the #metaMeta Meta is a term that refers to the inside workings of a group. For us, this is the team that works on internal WordPress sites like WordCamp Central and Make WordPress. channel on Slack