We’re delighted to announce several new Playground management features for the WordPress Playground website.
We’ve added a Playground Manager for listing and selecting your Playgrounds. Settings can be edited for each Playground, and Temporary Playgrounds (in-memory instances that disappear after the current page load) can now be saved to persistent storage so they are not lost. It’s even possible to run multiple Temporary instances simultaneously and switch between them using the Playground Manager.
Creating Playgrounds
By default, loading playground.wordpress.net creates a new Temporary Playground. To add another, you can then click the “Add Playground” button, configure the settings, and submit.
Note that this is your main opportunity to select the WordPress version. Most Playground settings can be edited after creation, but currently, a Playground’s WordPress version cannot be edited.
There are often situations where you need to save a temporary Playground instance. Previously, you would have to export the instance as a Zip file and manually import the Zip into a persistent Playground. Now, you can save directly to persistent storage with the click of a button, saving to either browser storage or a local directory on your device. (Local directory support is currently limited to Chrome-based browsers.)
Once a Playground is saved, it will appear in the Playground Manager list each time you open WordPress Playground.
Working with existing Playgrounds
Once a Playground is selected in the Playground Manager, you can edit its settings, export to Zip, import from Zip, and even Delete it.
To edit settings, click “Edit Playground Settings” toward the end of the Playground info view. All other options are available as part of the Playground info menu area. Both are highlighted in the screenshot below.
Most importantly, to begin using WordPress within the Playground, click “Homepage” to view the front end or “WP Admin” to open the admin Dashboard.
What’s next
Now that you can work with multiple Playgrounds at once, the Playground team plans to develop tools to migrate data between them. This will not only improve WordPress Playground but also hopefully contribute to the Data Liberation work within WordPress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/.
What do you think?
Give these new features a try, and share your thoughts in the comments. If you encounter any issues or would like to offer additional feedback, please open an issue on GitHub. Thank you!
