Kana is a simple CLI tool for developing WordPress plugins and themes efficiently.
As of version 0.0.1 I am using Kana for my own work on my personal website and a few tiny projects I've been developing. It is, however, still a very early project that will continue to receive a lot of updates over the coming weeks, months and beyond. While I hope it can help you too, I cannot promise you won't find bugs. Please do report any issues you find and I will gladly work to fix them to make this project useful for us all.
I've gone through many different tools to run WordPress sites over the years. All of them are either extremely complex or don't support basic features such as ensuring plugin and theme development can be a first-class experience. I rarely build sites with WordPress and I wanted a tool that will allow me to build the plugins and themes I do work on as efficiently as possible.
There are a few options for installing Kana. You can use Homebrew (recommended), you can install it from the "releases" page here or you can build it manually.
Installing from Homebrew is the recommended approach on both Max and Linux as it allows for automatic updates when needed. To install from Homebrew run the following command:
brew install ChrisWiegman/kana/kana
Note that, as there are numerous ways to install Docker, I have chosen, at least for now, to not list it as a dependency when installing via Homebrew. You'll want to make sure Docker is already installed or install it with brew install --cask docker
if you're on Mac (see this documentation if you're in Linux).
Simply download the latest release from our release page and extract the CLI to a location accessible by your system PATH
Note for Mac users I have not signed the download copy so you'll need to manually allow it in your Mac settings if you download it from the releases page. Install it via Homebrew to avoid this step.
You will need Go installed locally to build the application for now. I hope to fix this in the new future.
- Clone this repo
git clone git@github.com:ChrisWiegman/kana-cli.git
- CD into the repo and run
make install
Assuming you have Go properly setup with GOBIN in your system path, you should now be able to use Kana. Run kana version
to test.
At it's most basic you can start a zero-config Kana site by running kana start
in your terminal. This will create a new Kana site based on your current directory name and open it in your default browser. If it is the first time you've run Kana it will also install it's root CA in your Mac's system store.
Kana relies on Traefik to map real domains to local sites. You can run as many sites as you need and each will be mapped to a subdomain of sites.kana.li.
kana start
will start a kana site based on your current directory and open it in your browser.
To login to the new site use the following:
- User Name: admin
- Password: password
Note: these can be changed in the config. Please see below.
--plugin
will map the current directory as a plugin within the created site. Use this if you are developing a plugin.
--theme
will map the current directory as a theme within the created site. Use this if you are developing a theme.
--local
will create a directory called "wordpress" in the current directory and map it to the main WordPress site. This will allow you easy access, if you need it, to all the WordPress files (including any other installed plugins and themes) in your IDE.
If you do not specify the local
flag you can find Kana's site files in ~/.config/kana/sites/<SITE NAME>/app
--xdebug
will start Xdebug on the site (see below for usage).
--phpmyadmin
will start an instance of phpMyAdmin to allow for easier access to the database without needing external tools.
--name
The name flag allows you to run an arbitrary site from anywhere. For example, if you already started and stopped a site from a directory called test you can run kana start --name=test
to start that site from anywhere. If you use the name
flag on a new site it will create that site without a link to any local folder. This can be handy for testing a plugin or other configuration but not that none of the other start flags will apply.
Kana offers a simple way to import an existing WordPress database. Just use the kana db import <your database file>
to get started.
If you're coming from a site with a different home address you can specify --replace-domain=<my old site domain>
to automatically replace it with the appropriate domain for your dev site.
kana db import --replace-domain=chriswiegman.com database.sql
would import the file database.sql from my current directory and rename the old site address, chriswiegman.com, to the current and correct site address to work in Kana.
--replace-domain
The domain of your source site to replace with the appropriate Kana domain
--preserve
Prevents Kana from dropping any existing database and overwrites what you have. Warning: this may result in unpredictable issues.
You can also export the database file your Kana site is using with kana db export
. By default it will save the file in your default site directory but you can specify a relative path to the file where you would like to export your database if you wish.
kana stop
will stop the current site and, if no other sites are running, will shut down shared containers as well.
kana destroy
will stop and destroy the current site. This is different than stop
in that stop
will leave the database and files it creates alone so you can start it again later. Once destroyed a site is irrecoverable.
kana open
will open the site in your default browser
kana wp <WP-CLI COMMAND>
will execute a wp-cli command on your site. For example kana wp plugin list
will list all the plugins on the site and their associated statuses
The above commands will get an individual site up and running but there are a few more options to consider that can be changed for a given site or globally
Kana has a handful of options that apply to all new sites created with the app. You can adjust these with the config
command as noted below:
kana config
will list all changeable defaults for a new site. Currently these include the following:
admin.email
admin@kanasite.localhost - the admin email address for the default admin accountadmin.password
password - the default password used to login to WordPressadmin.username
admin - the default username used to login to WordPresslocal
false - the default usage of thelocal
start flagphp
7.4 - the default PHP version used for new sites (currently 8.0, 8.1 and 8.2 are also supported)type
site - the type of the Kana site you're starting. Current options are "site" "plugin" and "theme"xdebug
false - the default usage of thexdebug
start flagphpmyadmin
false - the default usage of thephpmyadmin
start flag
You can get or set any of the above options using a similar syntax to GIT's config. For example:
kana config admin.email
will print the value of the admin.email setting
kana config admin.email myemail@somedomain.com
will change the value of the admin.email setting to "myemail@somedomain.com".
The above syntax will allow you to change the defaults for any of the options listed
In addition to the global config, certain items above can be overridden for any given site. For a site without a name
flag (as seen in the start command), simply create a .kana.json file in the current directory. You can populate it with the following options:
local
false - the default usage of thelocal
start flagphp
7.4 - the default PHP version used for new sites (currently 8.0, 8.1 and 8.2 are also supported)type
site - the type of the Kana site you're starting. Current options are "site" "plugin" and "theme"xdebug
false - the default usage of thexdebug
start flagphpmyadmin
false - the default usage of thephpmyadmin
start flagplugins
[] - an array of plugins to install and activate when starting the new site. These are slugs from the Plugins section of WordPress.org.
kana export
will create a .kana.json configuration file in your current folder exporting the configuration of the current site including PHP version, active plugins and associated options as shown above
Currently there are two methods to access the database directly. First, use the phpmyadmin
flag or setting (set to true) to add an instance of phpMyAdmin to your site. You can access this by appending *phpmyadmin- to the beginning of your site domain. For example, if your site can get found at https://mysupersite.sites.kana.li you can access phpMyAdmin at https://phpmyadmin-mysupersite.sites.kana.li if you have enabled phpMyAdmin at site start.
You can also access the database directly by viewing the database port with docker ps
and using the database port and the following configuration in the app of your choice:
- Database host: kana_
your site name
_database - Database name: wordpress
- Database user: wordpress
- Database password: wordpress
Currently Kana only supports step debugging in xdebug. To use this with VSCode create a .vscode/launch.json file with the following:
"version": "0.2.0",
"configurations": [
{
"name": "Listen for XDebug",
"type": "php",
"request": "launch",
"port": 9003,
"log": true,
"pathMappings": {
"/var/www/html/wp-content/plugins/<MY KANA FOLDER NAME>/": "${workspaceFolder}",
"/var/www/html/": "${workspaceFolder}/wordpress",
}
}
]
}
Note the above example will map the current folder as a plugin and maps the wordpress folder as if the local
flag was used. You may need to adjust these paths depending on your setup.
To trigger step debugging you'll also need the appropriate extension for your browser:
- Xdebug Helper for Firefox (source).
- Xdebug Helper for Chrome (source).
- XDebugToggle for Safari (source).
Note that I am using this project for my own work and it is under active development. Some of the things I'm currently working on include:
- Better site management commands
- Support for more xdebug modes (trace, etc)
- Much more clear prompts and messages on the commands themselves
- Writing a lot more tests (it's a personal project, I start where I can)
- A proper website for all this documentation (I already bought a domain, after all)
- Possible support for Docker alternatives
I hate apps that leave leftovers on your machine. When stopping a site all Docker resources except the images will be removed. To remove the app completely beyond that you'll want to delete the following:
- Delete the application from your $GOBIN or system path (or run
brew uninstall kana
if installed via homebrew) - Delete the
~/.config/kana
folder which contains all site and app configuration - (Mac only) Delete the
Kana Development CA
certificate from the System keychain in the Keychain Access app - If installed via homebrew run
brew untap ChrisWiegman/kana
to remove the Homebrew tap
You can also safely remove any new images added however it is not a requirement. Many other apps might share those images leading to your system simply needing to download them again.