Developer Documentation

.wp-env

If you have Docker installed, you could use the wp-env package to load a WordPress development environment with this plugin automatically activated.

Local Development

Fork this repository

Although you can download a zip file of the plugin at:

https://github.com/GatherPress/gatherpress

If you want to help out with development, we suggest forking the code to your own GitHub repository and creating a branch from there.

Clone this repository

Once you’ve forked the repo, you should now have a mirrored copy of GatherPress, but on your profile’s URL, or something like this:

https://github.com/YourGitHubUsername/gatherpress

where YourGitHubUsername corresponds to your login name for GitHub.

To clone a local copy, open a terminal window and run the following command:

git clone git@github.com:YourGitHubUsername/gatherpress.git

if you have your SSH keys set up. If not, run:

git clone https://github.com/YourGitHubUsername/gatherpress.git

Note about customizing the URL

Once you have forked the GatherPress repo, you can also change the folder name of your version of the repository by going into your settings of your repo on GitHub’s website.

https://github.com/pbrocks/gatherpress

Install wp-env globally

In a terminal window, run:

npm i -g @wordpress/env

Change directory and run wp-env

In your terminal window, run:

cd gatherpress
wp-env start

You should then see that a development site has been configured for you on localhost port 8889

Log in to Site / Log into Site

Development Site Plugins/Themes

To further customize the development site using your favorite or most familiar development plugins or themes, you are able to add whatever you like because of this code added to the .wp-env.json file:

 "mappings": {
    "wp-content/plugins": "./wp-core/plugins",
    "wp-content/themes": "./wp-core/themes"
 },

In fact, after the initial setup, you may notice that in your code editor, there is now a wp-core folder containing the default plugins and themes, but it is grayed out, so the contents of this folder will not be committed to the GatherPress repository.

Installing Dependencies

1. Install the version of Node in .nvmrc.. NVM can be used to achieve this.
2. Install Composer
3. In your terminal window, cd to the gatherpress directory
4. Run npm install to get node dependencies
5. Run npm run build to compile scripts and styles
6. Run composer install to get PHPUnit dependencies

To shut down your development session

Simply run:

wp-env stop

For more info on wp-env package, consult the Block Handbook’s page.