Additional resources

Updating WordPress, plugins, and themes

There is an important caveat to keep in mind when maintaining WordPress on Platform.sh, namely that after the build process has completed your site is left with a read-only file system. This makes updating WordPress core, themes, and plugins not possible at runtime through the administration panel like you may be used to.

Keeping WordPress up-to-date in environments like this is the primary reason that managing WordPress with Composer is recommended. Keeping a vanilla WordPress up-to-date on Platform.sh requires you to clone the repository locally and subsequently remove and re-download WordPress core, themes, and plugins to their updated version. Perform this on a new branch, and push to Platform.sh to test the updates before merging.

If you choose to keep themes, plugins, and core defined as submodules in your project, consult the submodule documentation and git pull for the latest version.

Local development with Lando

Lando is a local development tool. Lando can read your Platform.sh configuration files for WordPress and produce an approximately equivalent configuration using Docker See a guide on using Lando with Platform.sh.

Templates come configured for use already with a base Landofile, as in the following example. It can be helpful getting started with Lando without the need to have a project on Platform.sh. This file sets up good defaults for Lando and Platform.sh-configured codebases, most notably through the recipe attribute.

# This file sets some good defaults for local development using this Platform.sh
# template with Lando.
#
# Note that you should not edit this file so it can continue to receive upstream
# updates. If you wish to change the values below then override them in your
# normal .lando.yml.

# These both allow you to test this template without needing a site on Platform.sh
# However you will want to replace them in your .lando.yml
name: platformsh-wordpress-vanilla
recipe: platformsh

# These are tools that are commonly used during development for this template.
tooling:
  wp:
    service: app

This Landofile is also where you can configure access to tools that would normally be available within a Platform.sh app container (such as the WordPress CLI) and that you also want to access locally.

You can replicate this file or follow the guide on using Lando with Platform.sh. Once you have completed the configuration, you can start your local environment by running:

lando start

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