WordPress walkthrough

End-to-end: from lerd install to a WordPress site running on https://myblog.test with MySQL.

Prerequisites

You've already run lerd install once on this machine. If not, see Installation.

Drive it from your AI assistant

Run lerd mcp:enable-global once and your AI assistant (Claude Code, Junie, Windsurf) can call every command below as an MCP tool: site_link, env_setup, setup, db_create, site_tls, etc. See AI Integration.

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1. Register the WordPress framework definition (one-time)

Save this as ~/.config/lerd/frameworks/wordpress.yaml:

# ~/.config/lerd/frameworks/wordpress.yaml
name: wordpress
label: WordPress
detect:
  - file: wp-login.php
  - file: wp-config.php
public_dir: .
env:
  fallback_file: wp-config.php
  fallback_format: php-const
composer: false
npm: false

Then register it:

lerd framework add wordpress --from-file ~/.config/lerd/frameworks/wordpress.yaml

Why no .env?

WordPress stores configuration in wp-config.php as PHP constants, not in a .env file. The fallback_file / fallback_format settings tell lerd to read constants like DB_HOST, WP_HOME, and WP_SITEURL directly from wp-config.php. This means lerd env doesn't auto-inject database credentials the way it does for Laravel or Symfony; you'll wire them up by hand in step 5.

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2. Download WordPress

wp-cli

cd ~/Lerd
wp core download --path=myblog

curl + tar

cd ~/Lerd
mkdir myblog && cd myblog
curl -O https://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz
tar -xzf latest.tar.gz --strip-components=1
rm latest.tar.gz

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3. Register the site

cd ~/Lerd/myblog
lerd link

lerd link detects WordPress (via wp-login.php or wp-config.php), assigns http://myblog.test, and serves from the project root.

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4. Configure PHP and start MySQL

lerd init

? PHP version: 8.3
? Node version (leave blank to skip):
? Enable HTTPS? Yes
? Services: [mysql]
Saved .lerd.yaml

Workers are not shown; the WordPress framework definition declares none.

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5. Create the database

lerd db:create myblog

This creates myblog and myblog_testing inside the lerd-mysql container.

Database credentials

Setting	Value
Host	lerd-mysql
Port	3306
User	root
Password	lerd
Database	myblog

These come from the lerd built-in MySQL service. See Services.

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6. Configure wp-config.php

Run the WordPress installer (browser at http://myblog.test) which will prompt for the values above, or copy wp-config-sample.php and edit it manually:

cp wp-config-sample.php wp-config.php

Then edit the DB_* constants:

define( 'DB_NAME',     'myblog' );
define( 'DB_USER',     'root' );
define( 'DB_PASSWORD', 'lerd' );
define( 'DB_HOST',     'lerd-mysql' );

Generate fresh authentication salts (the installer does this automatically; for the manual path, replace the placeholder block with output from https://api.wordpress.org/secret-key/1.1/salt/).

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7. Enable HTTPS

lerd secure myblog

This issues a trusted local cert via mkcert and switches the vhost to HTTPS. WordPress also stores its canonical URL in two places, so update them too:

// wp-config.php
define( 'WP_HOME',    'https://myblog.test' );
define( 'WP_SITEURL', 'https://myblog.test' );

(Or update the same values in Settings > General from the WordPress admin.)

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8. Open it

lerd open

Walk through the five-minute install (admin user, site title, password). When you're done, https://myblog.test/wp-admin is your dashboard.

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9. Verify

lerd status

myblog should be listed as active and mysql as running. Live nginx and PHP-FPM logs are in the Web UI at http://127.0.0.1:7073.

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What just happened

Command	What it did
lerd framework add wordpress	Registered the YAML so WordPress projects are auto-detected
lerd link	Assigned myblog.test, set document root to project root
lerd init	Wrote .lerd.yaml with PHP 8.3 and the MySQL service
lerd db:create myblog	Created myblog and myblog_testing inside lerd-mysql
(manual) wp-config.php edits	Pointed WordPress at lerd-mysql and the new database
lerd secure myblog	Issued mkcert TLS, switched vhost to HTTPS

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Next steps

• Frameworks & Workers: extend wordpress.yaml to add log paths or custom workers (e.g. wp cron event run)
• Database: lerd db:import to load a production dump, lerd db:shell for quick queries
• Services: add a Mailpit service to capture outgoing mail in dev
• HTTPS: wildcard certs for multi-site or git worktrees
• AI Integration (MCP): drive lerd from Claude Code, Cursor, Junie, etc.