Developing websites with the WordPress content management system involves:
- Writing content.
- Working with design and structure.
- Installing plugins and implementing code.
Maintaining a WordPress site that receives a lot of traffic can take a lot of time and effort if you work traditionally in all these processes. Using manual methods can lead to complex situations that negatively affect the smooth workflow. In much larger sites, or sites with multiple WordPress installations, this manual work system becomes unfeasible, and automation of many processes is necessary. DevOps concepts and IT team augmentation can be of help in this situation.
How to Achieve Automation in WordPress
WordPress management involves several processes and tasks that can be automated to reduce time and effort, reducing potential errors. Carrying out this automation requires a management system that optimizes the workflow, and DevOps adapts to these requirements.
DevOps is a work methodology that involves the collaboration of the development team with the operations team to deliver quality applications or software in a continuous and agile way. Therefore, this philosophy fits perfectly with the needs of WordPress, where new features are constantly being added, performing updates, configuring new plugins, adjusting themes, applying security measures, etc.
How to Relate DevOps and WordPress
When working on professional projects with WordPress (complex websites, multisite, or e-commerce sites, for example), the DevOps methodology is ideal for the continuous delivery of new features or updates, ensuring their availability and avoiding any downtime or interruption. The joint work of the development team with the operational team allows the delivery to be carried out optimally without negatively affecting customers.
Using an automated implementation and relying on tools that facilitate development and deployment, WordPress DevOps is the optimal solution for managing a professional website.
Automated Deployment: what is it?
Automated deployment is a DevOps practice by which code is moved between different environments efficiently. WordPress consists of moving the code from the working environment (an environment created on a computer) to a web server (or moving the code between different web servers).
With automated deployment, WordPress can move from one environment to another in an optimal way, working correctly and without errors.
What are the Best Methods and Tools?
Automation requires initial work to set up several tools that will help during this process. These programs or devices for automation cover the following areas of work:
- Code control. WordPress core, as well as all plugins in the official repository, are available on GitHub.
- Testing control. WordPress is written in the PHP language to use tools such as PHPUnit (also found on GitHub) for testing or unit testing.
- Development environment. Vagrant is a development environment that allows automating virtual machines to run WordPress, offering advantages such as using the same conditions of the environment that will be used in production (same version of Apache server, PHP, and MySQL, for example). It also allows you to make changes in the environment without affecting other projects you are working on. It also makes it easier for all development team members to work under a unified environment, ensuring its proper functioning.
- Automation of installations. With some installation automation tools, you can ensure that WordPress installations are performed equally in all environments (development, testing, and production). Grunt and wp-cli are two tools that allow automating WordPress installations.
- Configuration management. WordPress configurations can be stored using a tool such as WP-CFM (which can be used in conjunction with the wp-CLI installation automation tool) and allows you to manage WordPress configuration and easily apply it in all phases of development staging production.
- Deployment. To automate the deployment of the code, you can use tools such as Rocketeer, widely used by PHP developers.
Benefits of WordPress DevOps
Applying the DevOps methodology in WordPress brings several benefits, mainly derived from automating processes and work.
Correct Functioning of the Website
It ensures the proper functioning of the WordPress site and the services it offers, and its maintenance and updates. A website must have its services and content always available, and its access and usability must be fast and efficient. With a DevOps development, WordPress is always optimally configured, will have the latest and most secure version, and will work efficiently.
Reduced Implementation Errors
Minimizes potential errors related to changes made to WordPress or its implementation and facilitates rollback in the event of a disastrous situation that disrupts service.
Improves Collaboration
Automating many processes and tasks such as code and version control allows for better collaboration between developers, avoiding sharing files using cloud storage platforms, FTP, or similar. Having an automated deployment removes the limitation for developers when it comes to deploying their code.
Continuous Delivery
Introduces a continuous delivery system for all changes, updates, patches, and new features made to WordPress without affecting the site’s availability and eliminating possible errors (by having virtual test environments identical to production ones).
Customer Satisfaction
The DevOps team takes care of all the management of updates, maintenance, optimization, security, and monitoring of WordPress, allowing the customer to focus on the parts of their business that generate value, increasing their level of satisfaction, and not worrying about aspects related to their website such as downtimes, loading speed, security, infrastructure (hosting features) and so on.
Managing a WordPress website can become a complex task, especially in large projects that use multiple sites, databases, servers and receive a large amount of traffic. In these cases, it is essential to have a system that allows an automated implementation that enables the work of your developers and reduces difficulties and errors.
The DevOps methodology fits the needs of these WordPress projects that are constantly changing by adding new features, receiving security updates, and adjusting their design and structure.
Conclusion
Applying the DevOps philosophy to work on web projects with WordPress allows moving from a manual implementation to a workflow optimization with an automated performance.
