README

Site setup, development environment and deploy tooling for WordPress VIP:

Uses Composer for adding project dependencies, including plugins and themes.
Uses Composer autoloader for using any of the popular PHP packages anywhere in the codebase.
Includes a local development environment based on Docker with support for PHP Xdebug and a mail catcher.
Includes automated build and deploy pipelines to WordPress VIP Go using GitHub Actions.

Links & Resources

Requirements

PHP 8.2
Composer
Node.js version 20
Docker with Docker Compose
rsync for deployments

Install Dependencies

We suggest using Homebrew on macOS or Chocolatey for Windows to install the project dependencies.

brew install git php@8.2 composer node@20 mkcert nss
brew install --cask docker

Once NVM is installed, you can install the required Node.js version from the .nvmrc file:

nvm install
nvm use

WordPress Compatibility

This theme template is aligned with WordPress 6.8.x package versions. To update packages to match a different WordPress version: npx wp-scripts packages-update --dist-tag=wp-[version] --save

Code Editor and Git Client

This repository includes a list of suggested extensions for the Visual Studio Code editor and Xdebug support in the .vscode directory.

A user-friendly Git client such as GitHub Desktop or Tower enables smaller commits and simplifies merge conflict resolution.

Overview

Project plugins and themes can be added as Composer dependencies or manually to this repository under plugins/your-plugin and themes/your-theme.
Composer dependencies are placed under plugins/vendor since it has to be in the same location relative to the project root (which is not the case for vip-config, which is mapped to the WP root directory on the server).
Composer autoloader plugins/vendor/autoload.php is included in vip-config/vip-config.php.

Initial Setup

Important: This section can be deleted once you've completed the initial setup from the VIP Go Site template.

The site project generated from this template is designed to be hosted under the WP VIP GitHub organization which is why it uses GitHub Actions for deployments - GitHub Action based workflow.

VIP Platform Configuration

The following configuration must be requested from VIP Go to use this site repository:

Deployments from *-built branches such as main-built and develop-built.
Staging environment tracking the develop-built branch.

VIP Repository Setup

Ensure that VIP has configured the site to deploy from the *-built branches.
Create a fresh local Git repository from this reference repository:
```
 composer create-project xwp/vip-site-template --stability dev
```
Add your theme and plugins as Composer dependencies:
```
 composer require your/theme your/plugin another/plugin
```
or by manually copying them to themes or plugins. Remember to start tracking those directories by excluding them in themes/.gitignore and plugins/.gitignore.
Adjust strings and URLs in all files match your project. Search and replace the following strings: xwp/vip-site-template, xwp-vip-site-template, wpcomvip/devgo-vip, XWP\VIP_Site_Template, network.local.wpenv.net, main.local.wpenv.net, XWP_VIP_Site_Template, xwp/example-theme, themes/example-theme example-theme.
If hosting this source repository under the VIP GitHub organization, add the VIP Go upstream repository as another remote to this repository locally and force-push the current main to that upstream repository to override the main branch with this. Do the same for the develop branch.

For hosting this source repository under any other GitHub organization, simply push it to that repository.
Generate a fresh SSH key pair and add the private part as a DEPLOY_SSH_KEY GitHub Actions secret, and the public part as the Deploy key to the VIP GitHub repository.
```
 ssh-keygen -f deploy-key -t rsa -b 4096 -C "technology+project-name@xwp.co"
```
This provides GitHub Actions with access to the VIP repository for deployments.
Remove references to either GitHub actions from this README depending on which deploy strategy was selected.
Remove these initial setup instructions from the README after the initial project setup.

Setup 🛠

Clone this repository:

 git clone git@github.com:xwp/vip-site-template.git devgo-vip

Move into the project directory:
```
 cd devgo-vip
```
Install the project dependencies:
```
 npm install
```
Install ssl certificate to add the certificate authority of the development environment local/data/mkcert/rootCA.pem to the trusted list on your computer. Alternatively, configure it manually.
```
 npm run install-cert
```
Start the development environment using Docker:
```
 npm run start
```
and npm run stop to stop the virtual environment at any time. Run npm run start-debug to start the environment in debug mode where all output from containers is displayed. Run npm run stop-all to stop all active Docker containers in case you're running into port conflicts.
Install the local WordPress environment:
```
 npm run setup
```
with the configuration from wp-cli.yml.
Visit network.local.wpenv.net for the network admin or main.local.wpenv.net for the main site. WordPress username devgo and password devgo.
Visit mail.local.wpenv.net to view all emails sent by WordPress.

The local development environment uses a self-signed SSL certificate for HTTPS so the "Your connection is not private" error can be ignored to visit the site.

Resolving Port Conflicts

Docker engine shares the networking interface with the host computer, so all the ports used by the containers must be free and unused by any other services such as a DNS resolver on port 53, MySQL service on port 3306 or another web server running on port 80.

Use the included npm run stop-all command to stop all containers running Docker containers on the host machine. Alternatively, you can adjust the port mappings in docker-compose.yml to expose different ports on the host machine.

Contribute

Setup the local environment environment as described in the "Setup" section above.
Create a Git branch such as feature/name or fix/vertical-scroll when you start working on a feature or a bug fix. You can use the develop branch for your own testing and development.
Open a pull request from your feature branch to the main branch for code review.
Review any feedback from the automated checks (linting, testing).
Once approved, squash and merge the PR into main. This automatically deploys to the test environment.

Plugins and Themes

Add new themes and plugins as Composer dependencies:

composer require your/theme your/plugin another/plugin

or manually copy them to themes, plugins or client-mu-plugins directories. Remember to start tracking the directories copied manually by excluding them from being ignored in themes/.gitignore and plugins/.gitignore.

Use client-mu-plugins/plugin-loader.php to force-enable certain plugins.

To update plugins and themes added as Composer dependencies, use composer install package/name or composer install --dev package/name where package/name is the name of the plugin or theme package. Be sure to commit the updated composer.json with composer.lock to the GitHub repository.

For manually installed plugins and themes replace the directory with the updated set of files and commit them to the GitHub repository.

Local Development Environment

We use Docker containers to replicate the VIP Go production environment with all VIP dependencies added as Composer packages and mapped to specific directories inside the containers as defined in docker-compose.yml.

Requests to port 80 of the container host are captured by an Nginx proxy container that routes all requests to the necessary service container based on the HTTP hostname.

Importing and Exporting Data

Use VIP dashboard or VIP-CLI to download the database data from the production environment.

Run npm run vip -- export sql --output=local/public/wp/vip-export.sql to download the latest available backup to your local computer.
Run npm run cli -- wp db export to export and backup the database of your local development environment, which will place a file like wordpress-2020-03-04-448b132.sql in the local/public/wp directory.
Run npm run cli -- wp db import vip-export.sql to import local/public/wp/vip-export.sql into your local development environment.
Run npm run cli -- bash -c "pv import.sql | wp db query" to import a large database file local/public/wp/vip-export.sql while monitoring the progress with pv which is bundled with the WordPress container. The bash -c prefix allows us to run multiple commands inside the container without affecting the main npm run cli command.

Scripts 🧰

We use npm as the canonical task runner for things like linting files and creating release bundles. Composer scripts (defined in composer.json) are used only for PHP related tasks and they have a wrapper npm script in package.json for consistency with the rest of the registered tasks.

npm run start and npm run stop to start and stop the local development environment. Run npm run start-debug to start the environment in debug mode, where all output from containers is displayed. Run npm run stop-all to stop all active Docker containers in case you're running into port conflicts. Run npm run stop -- --volumes to stop the project containers and delete the database data volume.
npm run lint to check source code against the defined coding standards.
npm run cli -- wp help where wp help is any command to run inside the WordPress docker container. For example, run npm run cli -- wp plugin list to list all of the available plugins or npm run cli -- composer update to update the Composer dependencies using the PHP binary in the container instead of your host machine. Run npm run cli -- wp user create devgo local@devgo.vip --role=administrator --user_pass=devgo to create a new administrator user with devgo as username and password.
npm run vip to run VIP CLI commands on staging and production environments.
npm run install-cert to mark the self-signed SSL certificate authority (under local/certs/rootCA.pem) for the local development environment as trusted. Make sure mkcert is installed on your computer. This command is required to avoid the "Your connection is not private" error when visiting the site. Stop the local environment before running this command, restart the browser/tab after installing the certificate, and start the environment again.

Release Process & Deployments 🚀

This project follows a structured release process with automated deployments managed by GitHub Actions workflows.

Branch Strategy

Branch	Purpose	Environment	Auto-Deploy
`develop`	Development work	Dev	✅
`main`	Staging/testing	Test	✅
`release`	UAT testing	Pre-prod	✅
`production`	Live site	Production	✅

Release Workflow

Development: Developers can use develop for testing, but create PRs to main for code review
Testing: Approved features merged into main → Auto-deploys to test environment
Release Creation: EM/TL creates release branch from main for UAT → Auto-deploys to pre-prod
Production: After UAT approval, release is merged → production → Auto-deploys to production

Automated Workflows

Our deployment process uses several automated GitHub Actions workflows:

Test & Deploy: Runs on all PR/push events - handles linting, testing, and environment-specific deployments
- Note: Tests are skipped for production deployments since code has already been tested in pre-production
Create Release Branch: Manual workflow for EM/TL to create release branches from main
Create Production PR: Manual workflow to create production release PRs with comprehensive checklists
Release Cleanup: Automatic cleanup after production deployments
Docker Images: Builds and publishes Docker images when needed

📋 Detailed workflow documentation: GitHub Actions Workflows

Environment Configuration

The workflows require specific GitHub secrets and variables to be configured in your repository settings.

📋 Complete configuration details: Workflow Configuration

Technical Details

The deployment process:

Runs local/scripts/deploy.sh which creates a clean build environment
Checks code against VIP coding standards
Builds release artifacts and filters files using .distinclude
Commits changes to the matching VIP branch for server import

NewRelic Integration

Automatic deployment markers are sent to NewRelic (when NEW_RELIC_API_KEY is configured):

npm run newrelic-mark-deploy -- --search "*-production" --api_key "$NEW_RELIC_API_KEY" --commit "$COMMIT_SHA" --user "$DEPLOY_USER" --description "$COMMIT_MESSAGE"

The --search parameter finds NewRelic apps using the pattern *-{environment} where environment matches the VIP environment name.

xwp / vip-go-site

Maintainers

Details