WordPress wp-cli overview

WordPress Command Line Interface (wp-cli ) is a command-line WordPress tool installed on all DreamHost servers. wp-cli allows you to run WordPress commands from your Shell terminal to manage your WordPress site without the need to log in to the WordPress dashboard.

You will need to log in to your server via SSH to use wp-cli. View the following articles for information on how to create a Shell user and log into your server.

• Creating a user with Shell (SSH) access
• SSH overview

After you're logged in to your server, make sure you’re in your website’s directory. This is where you'll run all commands in this article.

General

• View all wp-cli commands
• Using help to view command information
• wp-cli version

Top commands

• Plugins
• Themes
• Updating WordPress
• Users

Troubleshooting

• Cache
• Database
• Permalinks

Custom changes

• Updating the home and siteurl
• Importing and exporting a WXR file
• Search and Replace
• wp-config.php
• Updating the PHP version wp-cli uses

[server]$ wp

A list of all available commands displays.

To get more information on a specific command, run the --help option.

[server]$ wp plugin --help

This prints a list of available subcommands. For example:

SUBCOMMANDS
  
    activate              Activates one or more plugins.
    deactivate            Deactivates one or more plugins.
    delete                Deletes plugin files without deactivating or uninstalling.
    get                   Gets details about an installed plugin.
    install               Installs one or more plugins.
    is-active             Checks if a given plugin is active.
    is-installed          Checks if a given plugin is installed.
    list                  Gets a list of plugins.
    path                  Gets the path to a plugin or to the plugin directory.
    search                Searches the WordPress.org plugin directory.
    status                Reveals the status of one or all plugins.
    toggle                Toggles a plugin's activation state.
    uninstall             Uninstalls one or more plugins.
    update                Updates one or more plugins.
    verify-checksums      Verifies plugin files against WordPress.org's checksums.  

You can then add one of these subcommands to the main command to perform an action. Here is how you’d install a plugin named hello-dolly:

[server]$ wp plugin install hello-dolly
  Installing Hello Dolly (1.6)
  Downloading install package from https://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/hello-dolly.1.6.zip...
  Unpacking the package...
  Installing the plugin...
  Plugin installed successfully.  

Creating users

[server]$ wp user list

[server]$ wp user create newusername admin@example.com --role=administrator

Changing a password

[server]$ wp user update 3 --user_pass=NEW_PASSWORD

Deleting a user

[server]$ wp user delete 13 --reassign=7

You can use the import and export commands to manage your site data with a WXR file. View the following article for details.

• Importing and exporting a WXR file

Search and replace text in your database. Make sure to use the --dry-run flag the first time to see what will change.

[server]$ wp search-replace http://example.com https://example.com/blog --dry-run

A list of fields that will be updated displays in your terminal. If you'd like to update all output displayed, run the command again without the --dry-run flag.

[server]$ wp search-replace http://example.com https://example.com/blog

1. View the current version of PHP and its location by running the following command:

   [server]$ wp cli info
   OS: Linux 4.14.117-grsec-grsec+ #1 SMP Fri May 10 17:15:47 PDT 2019 x86_64
   Shell: /bin/bash
   PHP binary: /usr/local/php74/bin/php
   PHP version: 7.4.15
   php.ini used: /etc/php74/php.ini
   WP-CLI root dir: /usr/local/wp
   WP-CLI vendor dir: /usr/local/wp/vendor
   WP_CLI phar path:
   WP-CLI packages dir:
   WP-CLI global config: /usr/local/wp/config.yml
   WP-CLI project config:
   WP-CLI version: 2.4.0

2. To change the version of PHP wp-cli uses, add the following line to your .bash_profile. Change the version as needed. This example uses PHP 8.0.

   export WP_CLI_PHP=/usr/local/php80/bin/php wp

3. Update the .bash_profile:

   [server]$ . ~/.bash_profile

4. Finally, check to confirm wp-cli is using this new version.

   [server]$ wp cli info
   OS:     Linux 4.14.117-grsec-grsec+ #1 SMP Fri May 10 17:15:47 PDT 2019 x86_64
   Shell:  /bin/bash
   PHP binary:     /usr/local/php80/bin/php
   PHP version:    8.0.2
   php.ini used:   /etc/php80/php.ini
   MySQL binary:   /usr/bin/mysql
   MySQL version:  mysql  Ver 14.14 Distrib 5.7.33, for Linux (x86_64) using  EditLine wrapper
   SQL modes:
   WP-CLI root dir:        /usr/local/wp
   WP-CLI vendor dir:      /usr/local/wp/vendor
   WP_CLI phar path:
   WP-CLI packages dir:
   WP-CLI global config:   /usr/local/wp/config.yml
   WP-CLI project config:
   WP-CLI version: 2.5.0-alpha