In this presentation for the St. Louis WordPress Meetup group, I cover setting up a local WordPress development environment with Vagrant. More information on the setup can be found here: https://jasonyingling.me/setting-up-a-local-wordpress-environment-with-vagrant/

1. Developing WordPress Locally
with Vagrant
Jason Yingling
@jason_yingling

2. Why Should You Develop Locally?
• Gives you the opportunity to test first
• Quickly setup sites for testing
• Avoid this:

3. MAMP
• Pros
– Free
– Easy setup
• Cons
– No custom domains
– Single server
– Not great for multiple installs

4. MAMP Pro
• Pros
– Multiple sites
– Custom domains
– Multiple versions of PHP
– GUI Interface
• Cons
– Not free

5. Vagrant
• Pros
– Custom domains
– Multiple sites
– Free
– Anything is possible!
• Cons
– No gui (by default)
– Command line seems intimidating

6. What We’ll Need to Setup
• Virtual Box
• Vagrant
• Varying Vagrant Vagrants
• Variable VVV

7. What We’ll Need to Do to Setup Local
WordPress Sites When Done
• Open terminal
• Type “vv create”
• Answer a few prompts
• Grab a beer and wait

8. Install VirtualBox
• https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads
• Download the most recent version
• Install like any other application

9. Install Vagrant
• https://www.vagrantup.com/downloads.html
• Download the most recent version
• Install like any other application

10. Setup Varying Vagrant Vagrants
• Open up Terminal
• Run “vagrant plugin install vagrant-
hostsupdater”
• Run “vagrant plugin install vagrant-triggers”
• Navigate to a directory to use for your vagrant
directory: “cd ~/sites”
• Clone the VVV repo: “git clone
git://github.com/Varying-Vagrant-
Vagrants/VVV.git vagrant-local”

11. Variable VVV
• Let’s you create new WordPress installs by
answering a few prompts

12. Install Variable VVV
• Don’t have Homebrew. Install it with ruby -e
"$(curl -fsSL
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebr
ew/install/master/install)”
• Run “brew install bradp/vv/vv”
• Run “vv create” any time you want to make a
new dev site
• Set your path
– /Users/{ComputerUserName}/sites/vagrant-local

13. Vagrant Manager

14. Vagrant Manager Installation
• https://github.com/lanayotech/vagrant-
manager/releases/tag/2.3.0

15. Vagrant Dashboard

16. Install Vagrant Dashboard
• Navigate to your vagrant-local folder: cd
~/sites/vagrant-local/www
• Run: git clone
https://github.com/topdown/VVV-
Dashboard.git dashboard
• From the Dashboard folder:
– Copy the dashboard-custom.php to vagrant-
local/www/default/dashboard-custom.php
– Copy the style.css to vagrant-
local/www/default/style.css
• Check out your Fancy new dashboard at vvv.dev

17. VVV Provision Flipper
• Speed up the provisioning process
• Download from Github: https://github.com/bradp/vvv-
provision-flipper
• Run: echo $PATH
• Copy flip file into one of the paths from the previous step
• Run: flip
• Set path to your vagrant-local folder:
/Users/{ComputerUserName}/sites/vagrant-local
• Select your provision script with “flip set {scripte_name}”
ex: flip set quick
• Reset to the original provision script with “flip reset”

18. Blueprints
• Allows you to set specific plugins, themes,
content, and more to be installed when a new
site is created
• Run: vv --blueprint-init to create vv-
blueprints.json file
• Sample:
https://github.com/bradp/vv#blueprints

19. Hooks
• Newer feature of Variable VV
• Similar to WP Hooks
• Let’s you hook into processes that run during
site creation and add your own code

20. Resources
• Detailed setup guide:
https://jasonyingling.me/setting-up-a-local-
wordpress-environment-with-vagrant/
• Varying Vagrant Vagrants -
https://github.com/Varying-Vagrant-
Vagrants/VVV#varying-vagrant-vagrants
• Variable VV -
https://github.com/bradp/vv#variable-vvv---
the-best-vvv-site-wizard