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Worpress Theme Development

· One min read

The easiest way I have found to work on a custom Wordpress theme is to use Local.

Requirements​

  • If the site is already live, get a SQL dump

  • Get your wp-config.php file and add the following lines:

    define('WP_HOME','http://mysite.local');
    define('WP_SITEURL','http://mysite.local');

  • In the same file, you might also need to update the table prefix, look for $table_prefix

  • Get a copy of the wp-content directory of your site

Setup​

  • Download and install Local

  • Create a zip archive that contains the SQL dump, the copy of the wp-content directory and the wp-config.php file

  • Drag and drop the archive in Local and follow the setup assistant

  • Create a symbolic link to your theme:

    ln -s /absolute/path/to/theme /absolute/path/to/Local/site/location

When you need a fresh version of the DB or the content, you just have to put together the zip archive again. Just delete the existing site and create a new one.

An alternative way to do local theme development is to use Docker: github.com/nezhar/wordpress-docker-compose.