WordPress Automation in 2026: Practical Workflows with WP-CLI and AI (WP Meetup Vienna January 14 2026)

Transcript

1. WordPress Automation in 2026: Practical Workflows with WP-CLI & AI Marcel Tannich | WP Meetup Vienna January 14th, 2026
2. Marcel Tannich Freelance Dev / Technical Support Team Lead @ onTheGoSystems / WP Co-Organizer / Speaker WP Photo: Carmen Tannich-Wallner Find me on LinkedIn / Bluesky or tannich.com
3. How WP-CLI changed the way I work with WordPress
4. The Problem ✓ Install WordPress manually or through a hosting panel. ✓ Configure wp-config.php. ✓ Adjust basic settings: permalinks, users, SEO, caching, security. ✓ Install and configure your usual plugins and theme. ❗ Repeated differently on every project. ❗ Easy to forget steps or introduce mistakes. ❗ And it quietly eats a lot of your time.
5. The Solution: WP-CLI + Scripting ✓ WP-CLI installs WordPress in seconds. ✓ Simple scripts handle settings, plugins, and themes. ✓ One command can set up a full project baseline. ✓ Consistent. Repeatable. Reliable. ☕ Often finished before your coffee cools.
7. Practical Examples: Maintenance ✓ Run maintenance tasks on a site Updates, Flush Rewrite Rules, DB-Repair, Set Permalinks, Reset PW, Search/Replace, … ✓ Update multiple sites consistently ✓ Use environments and aliases $ wp @client1 $ wp @dev or $ wp @prod $ wp @all plugin install woocommerce –activate
8. Practical Examples: Technical Support ✓ Activate the DEBUG constants ✓ Create a user on a local site copy ✓ Fix URL issues ✓ Overwriting values in wp_options table ✓ Export / Import databases ✓ $ wp eval (run arbitrary PHP Code) ✓ Spin UP Sandboxes / Local Installs
9. The Evolution: From Scripts -> AI-Powered Automation ✓ Vercel v0, Replit, Lovable -> build automation tools faster. ✓ Turn ideas into working concepts -> not writing every line of code. ✓ Build once, reuse on any future WordPress project.
11. What's New?? What changed since WCEU25? ✓ WP AI Team ✓ Abilities API ✓ MCP (Model Context Protocol) ✓ ACP (Agentic Commerce Protocol) -> ✓ Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP)
12. Automation isn’t about being lazy. It’s about eliminating distractions, so you can focus on what truly matters. WP-CLI isn’t a solution. It’s a foundation. And what you build on top of it is entirely up to you.
14. Thank You! tannich.com / bsky.app/profile/tannich.com