In today’s post, we are going to discuss WordPress development using
WebMatrix — starting from the installation to deploying it in an online
server.
Installing WordPress
WebMatrix allows you to install WordPress directly through the application. To create a new WordPress project, Go to
App Gallery.
If this is your first time accessing MySQL, you will be prompted for the password.
After accepting the WordPress UELA, WebMatrix will start downloading
WordPress, and automatically create the required assets like database
name and password.
In WebMatrix, click on the
Site Admin. It will
redirect you to the WordPress admin page. In that page, fill in the
required information for the site like Site Name and your admin
password. Click Install WordPress to complete the installation.
Additional Setups
I prefer using a customized host name in my development stage, rather than sticking with the following format
localhost:1245. To do so, open Notepad as Administrator.
Open the hosts file from the
Windows\system32\drivers\etc\ folder in the Notepad. Then, add the following line.
This will point
dev.wp.com address to the local IP address 127.0.0.1. Note that the hostname is merely an example; do change the name as required.
The next step is essential. Close, then
Open WebMatrix as Adminstrator – you need administrator privilege to change the address. Then, go to the
Settings panel under the
Site workspace, and change the URL to the one that we have added in the hosts file, as follows.
The "
port 80" is required to tell which port should be used for the address. Otherwise, the URL will only return an error.
Editing Files
If you are proficient in PHP and WordPress functions you can make
some changes to the files, whether it is for developing themes or
plugins. The only thing that you are not allowed and must not to do is
changing the core files.
This is one of the more subtle features in WebMatrix; it prevents you
from changing the core files and will notify you with a warning.
As we mentioned in our previous post, WebMatrix will help you with
the auto-completion feature that shows a list of WordPress functions as
well as its uses.
Upload WordPresss to An Online Server
Once you are done developing your WordPress website, it is time to
upload it to the online server. WebMatrix provides two methods to do so;
we can either do it by using
Web Deploy or
FTP. To use Web Deploy, contact your hosting provider first to ask if they allow this method.
Mine does not support it, so I have to use the second method: FTP.
As a reminder the FTP method does not support transfering MySQL
databases, so it is likely that you should import it on your own using a
MySQL Administrator for Windows like
MySQL WorkBench.
Conclusion
I have to say that WebMatrix is one great piece of software from
Microsoft. It is free, nicely built, and integrates very well with some
open source project like WordPress, streamlining the development
workflow. Furthermore, there are a lot more features that we will
discuss in our next articles. So stay tuned
