Automate Your Configuration: The Joys of WP-CFM

Throughout our workflows, no matter our hosting provider, we often have to reconfigure items such as General Settings or Active Plugins - and even items such as our Autoptimize settings, or FacetWP facets - per environment.

Fear not! That is where WP-CFM comes in. It allows you to push your configuration from your local development, include it in your version control, and pull it in your higher environments. You can even take it one step further, and include some post-deploy hooks in your CircleCI, or via Pantheon Quicksilver.

We'll touch on what WP-CFM is, why it's awesome, and showcase some examples of how it will save you time, and sanity.

Transcript

1. PRESENTATION TITLE | 1 Kanopi Studios Automate Your Configuration The Joys of WP-CFM WordSesh | May 2021
2. Kanopi Studios Automate Your Configuration | 2 ...said no one EVER WordPress Configuration is Fun!
3. Kanopi Studios Automate Your Configuration | 3 Pain Points If we work across multiple development environments, we have to re-do our WordPress configuration each time. Plugins, settings, the whole thing.
4. Kanopi Studios Automate Your Configuration | 4 It Takes Too Much Time Build in a buffer to do the work and also to correct it too! Human error is sadly a real thing This is likely all of us when we forget to activate a plugin, or we do a configuration setting wrong
5. Kanopi Studios Automate Your Configuration | 5 But what if there was a better way?
6. Enter WP-CFM The answer to all our configuration needs.
7. Kanopi Studios Automate Your Configuration | 7 What can WP-CFM do for you? Copy DB settings to the filesystem This way, you don’t have to copy the entire database, which is never ideal. Similar to Drupal If you’ve used the Features module in Drupal, you’ll know. In the wp_options table? No problem! Any and all settings saved in this table can be captured. WP-CLI support Comfortable with the command line? You can push and pull - provided you know what you named your bundles.
8. Kanopi Studios Automate Your Configuration | 8 But how does this all work you ask? Create a bundle (group) of settings Push: Export database settings to the filesystem Pull: Import file-based settings into the database Uses JSON
9. Demo Time! Live demos always go well.
10. To Infinity...and Beyond! Not really...just let’s extend this beyond “out of the box” settings.
11. Hooks and Filters
12. Kanopi Studios Automate Your Configuration | 12 wpcfm_configuration_items This filter allows you to register custom configuration items.
13. Kanopi Studios Automate Your Configuration | 13 wpcfm_multi_env Disable WP-CFM’s multidev functionality.
14. Kanopi Studios Automate Your Configuration | 14 wpcfm_config_dir Change where your configuration directory is.
15. Kanopi Studios Automate Your Configuration | 15 wpcfm_config_url Change what your configuration url is.
16. Pantheon Quicksilver
17. Kanopi Studios Automate Your Configuration | 17 Even more automation! • Ties into code sync, deployment, and more • Allows you to integrate with other platforms • Many examples are available, beyond WP-CFM, at https://github.com/pantheon-systems/quicksilver-examples
18. Code Demo Demo
19. Kanopi Studios Automate Your Configuration | 19 Not on Pantheon? No problem! • WP-CLI is all you need (like love) • Set up Git post-deploy hooks, or SSH into the server • Configure this all with your CI/CD tool of choice
20. Looking Ahead
21. Kanopi Studios Automate Your Configuration | 21 It’s not 100% automatic You still need to trigger the push when you are doing a git push. 1 2 Additional Settings May Need Configuration While out of the box, you can support a lot - you may have to extend. 3 Open Source = Ever Changing While this is the state of WP-CFM now, it will only continue to evolve. Keep in Mind
22. Kanopi Studios Automate Your Configuration | 22 Resources 1. https://en-ca.wordpress.org/plugins/wp-cfm/ 2. https://forumone.github.io/wp-cfm/ 3. https://pantheon.io/docs/quicksilver 4. https://github.com/pantheon-systems/quicksilv er-examples
23. Thank You! Questions? Comments? Reach out anytime. Miriam Goldman miriam@kanopi.com @mirigoldman