Using Laravel Valet with WordPress

In case you missed the release of Laravel Valet last week, allow me to introduce you.

WHAT. A. RUSH.

Pretty awesome right? It’s not just for Laravel though. In fact, out of the box, Valet supports almost a dozen different php platforms as well as static sites, including WordPress.

But WordPress doesn’t have a one-command installer like Laravel. It requires a database, it’s more/less tied to a specific domain, and even then you need to go through the “Famous 5 Minute Install” before you can do anything with the site.

So out of the box, the Valet experience for WordPress is a bit lackluster since you still have to go through all that extra setup. Much of the initial install for WordPress can be done pretty easily using WP-CLI, but there’s still no single command – until now.

Introducing the valet command for WP-CLI

A new WP-CLI command you can pull in as a package, and is available right now on the official package index.

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$ wp package install aaemnnosttv/wp-cli-valet-command

There are a few prerequisites before you can use it, but if you already have Valet and WP-CLI installed, that’s pretty much it.

Here’s how it works. From your terminal, change to a directory where you keep your projects. Here I’m assuming that directory is called Sites in your home directory.

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$ cd ~/Sites
$ valet park; # only needed once for this directory
$ wp valet new my-project

You can now have a new WordPress install, ready to use right now in your browser at https://my-project.dev. By use I mean, you can view the homepage, login, etc. It’s completely installed.

Most of the magic I have to give credit to Valet for, but the end result is a one command, ready to use WordPress install.

But wait… there’s more

Have you ever wanted to work with WordPress locally, but didn’t want or need a MySQL database running just to make it work? Unfortunately, database abstraction isn’t exactly robust in WordPress as it is tightly coupled to SQL. However, it is possible to run WordPress using SQLite instead.

SQLite is a fast, server-less, user-less, zero-configuration, file-based database system. It’s also used more than any other database system there is.

The WP-CLI Valet command supports installing a new WordPress instance, ready to use with SQLite instead of MySQL with a single option.

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$ wp valet new my-project --db=sqlite

The command accepts many more options for fine-grained control.

Check it out on GitHub