Varying Vagrant Vagrants

VVV – what the heck?

• “An open source Vagrant configuration for developing with WordPress”
• Where Vagrant is “…a tool for building and managing virtual machine
• environments in a single workflow”
• Eh?
• Run a virtual server on your computer to do WP development
• Manage settings with a simple config file
• Get a load of tools specific to, or helpful for, WordPress
• https://varyingvagrantvagrants.org/

What do you get?

• Ubuntu 14.04, nginx, PHP fpm 7.0.x, memcached, all the PHP extensions you need to run WP – hosting gubbins
• MariaDB, PHPMyAdmin – database thingies
• PHPUnit, ack-grep, Git, subversion, grunt, node, Composer, – and other workflow and development do-dahs
• WordPress current version and WordPress development version as well as WP-CLI – WordPressy whatsits.
• Everything you need to run WP on a local machine

Awesome. How do I get it?

• See https://varyingvagrantvagrants.org/docs/en-US/installation/software-requirements/
• Run CMD as administrator
• Install VirtualBox (https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads) – I’d need “for Windows Hosts”
• Install Vagrant (https://www.vagrantup.com/downloads.html)
• Install Hosts Updater (the least reliable bit!) and test it
• Restart

Done all that. Now what?

• Clone VVV from Git
• You may need Git installed on your PC – see https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Getting-Started-Installing-Git
• but you’re already using workflow, right?
• Start your command prompt (try doing it as an admin user on your PC)
• cd to your vagrant directory

• vagrant up

• Wait!
• You’re up and running! Visit http://vvv.test

Woohoo! Bring me the WordPress

• Go to http://local.wordpress.test for current production WordPress
• Go to http://src.wordpress-develop.test for the development branch of
• WordPress (not yet Gutenbergy)
• Add your own sites by editing the file vvv-custom.yml in the main VVV folder:
• See https://varyingvagrantvagrants.org/docs/en-US/adding-a-new-site/
• Be careful with tabs and spaces in yml files – tabs bad, spaces good
• Edit the files the normal way on your local machine
• Use PHPMyAdmin as normal
• When you change things, run

vagrant reload --provision

on the command line

So what’s it good for?

• Contributing to WP core
• Building a theme you’re going to release
• Building a plugin you’re going to release
• Quickly getting a new, fresh WP installation running
• Learning WP-CLI
• Quickly changing PHP version to test things

What’s it bad for?

• Working with existing sites you’ve pulled down from a server
• Any sites with weird/custom folder structures
• Anything you’re moving from an existing development setup
• Beginners
• Speed of provisioning

What are the alternatives?

• Wamp
• Xampp
• Mamp
• Docker
• Plain virtual box
• Actual server

Do you recommend it then?

• Not really.

Questions?