AUSTIN, Texas – June 11, 2019 – WP Engine, the WordPress Digital Experience Platform (DXP), today announced the launch of the WP Engine DevKit, combining a local development environment, SSH Gateway access, easy deployments, and other best-in-class WordPress developer tools for building, debugging and deploying digital experiences. The WP Engine DevKit, currently available as an open beta, is free to download and works with any WordPress environment but is optimized for WP Engine. It is currently available for Mac & Linux in a command line interface (CLI) with a graphic user interface (GUI) version available soon.
Solving Developers’ Pain Points
Though it is the most popular content management system (CMS) in the world, making up over 34 percent of all websites, WordPress development isn’t always easy. Too much time can be wasted doing repetitive, manual tasks and debugging. Figuring out how to make all the disparate tools, libraries and packages work together can be daunting. And once all the tools are synced, workflow must be established to keep your projects on track. Often, all of these workflows, processes and tools can get in the way of actual development, bogging developers down and adding frustration to what should be a straightforward, productive process. DevKit integrates a number of best-in-class developer tools to help solve these common issues encountered by WordPress developers.
“We talked to hundreds of customers over the course of the last nine months of building DevKit, to ensure we created the development workflow and environment that developers actually want to use to experiment and iterate digital experiences faster,” said Jason Cohen, Founder and Chief Technology Officer at WP Engine. “We want to create the best development environment for WordPress and we will continue to invest in and iterate on our DevKit in the months ahead.”
What DevKit Includes:
- Container-based local development environment
- SSH Gateway access
- Seamless push & pull deployments
- Genesis-specific functionality
- Additional tools for building and debugging great WordPress projects faster
Key Benefits:
- All the needed tools in one place allows more coding time and less searching for software tools
- Faster developer cycles – tight integration with WP Engine means faster site iterations and more efficient development
- Perfect for any skill level – whether you are a novice developer or a WordPress expert, the WP Engine DevKit CLI and GUI (coming soon) interfaces give everyone a great environment for maximizing their productivity
“The WP Engine DevKit has opened up a lot of options that provide me greater tools for a better way to build and collaborate in WordPress development,” said James Gillispie, Development Director at Bellweather Agency. “DevKit’s integration with WP-CLI is amazing and a real game-changer for my development process.”
“I’m delighted by how well integrated the WP Engine DevKit CLI is with WP Engine’s environment,” said Jon Brown, CEO at 9seeds. “It makes common steps easy, like being able to pull the entire site and database down to local in a single CLI command, while providing super powerful developer tools like a built in man-in-the-middle proxy to inspect all outgoing requests in detail.”
A Local Environment
The benefit of being able to run a WordPress development environment locally gives developers a quicker way to iterate because everything is self contained on the computer, eliminating the need to wait for uploads, downloads, etc. This “sandbox” will give developers a safer way to experiment with their sites, allowing you to experiment but not affect the site or your production environment in any way. It also offers true offline functionality so developers can work anywhere, even where WiFi may be spotty, like on a plane or in a coffee shop, allowing them to remain productive.
Optimized For WP Engine
The WP Engine DevKit is free for anyone who works in a WordPress environment but it is optimized for WP Engine with flawless and fast syncing to staging and production environments. WP Engine customers will be able to access the DevKit via their customer portal. Prospective customers will be able to download it via the DevKit landing page. Learn more about the WP Engine DevKit here.