Variable VVV: A New VVV Site Creation Wizard for WordPress

Brad Parbs and his colleagues at WebDevStudios have created a new tool for the thousands of developers out there who utilize Varying Vagrant Vagrants for WordPress development. As Vagrant development environments are a daily staple of work life at WDS, the team needed a faster way for setting up new WordPress sites with VVV.

Variable VVV is their solution, a script that automates the creation and deletion of new WordPress sites using VVV. The script is based on Alison Barrett’s VVV Site Wizard.

“The original site wizard hasn’t been updated in about half a year. I’ve designed this to be a drop-in replacement,” Parbs told the Tavern. “All the flags and commands from vvv-site-wizard function 100% the same, so you can just install this and start using it exactly the same.” Anyone who has used the VVV Site Wizard in the past will be comfortable using Variable VVV right away.

The new script has a few additional features beyond the original VVV Site Wizard, including the following:

The ability to pass vagrant command through to VVV

An easier way to set your VVV installation path

The ability to clone a git-repo as wp-content

The ability to set more installation options

While creating the script, Parbs went through the issues list at the vvv-site-wizard repository and fixed a number of issues. He sees Variable VVV as the spiritual successor to the original tool and has designed it to be a bit easier to use. He noted that it takes just 1/3 the time to type the commands and the command results have also been vastly improved. “One example is the list command to show you all sites. With vvv-site-wizard, it is a plain list of site names. vv list will show you a colorized output, along with URLs and marking VVV defaults,” Parbs explained.

The WebDevStudios team has an extensive roadmap of features for future implementation. Parbs is most excited about the idea of “blueprints,” which would offer the ability to install themes and plugins while setting up a new site.

A blueprint would define a list of plugins, themes, mu-plugins, and various site options. When installing, you could grab that blueprint and it would set it all up. I’m planning on letting you grab from Github, WP.org, a zip file link, etc. I’ve outlined the idea on GitHub. You’d setup multiple blueprints, and when you do an install, you could grab a blueprint and use that. For example, an ‘ecommerce’ blueprint might install WooCommerce, some other plugins, and _s, or whatever you like.

As the VVV Site Wizard doesn’t seem to be maintained anymore, Parbs plans to keep Variable VVV going and has also outlined a number of other enhancements in the project’s issues queue:

Enable vv to auto-update itself

Add deployment capability

Delete site database during removal

Add option to add dummy content when creating site

Allow overriding of /htdocs install location

Parbs plans to add anything that will make developers’ lives easier at WebDevStudios, but he is also open to suggestions. “I’ve built the script to be extremely easy to add new functionality, so implementing features people request will be as easy as possible,” he said.

The script is now ready for public use. “Over the past few days, a few people here at WebDevStudios have been beta-testing it, and its really solid,” Parbs said. Variable VVV is now publicly available on GitHub for anyone who wants to use it or contribute back to the project. If you test the script, make sure to leave your feedback and suggestions in the project’s issues list, as WebDevStudios plans to consistently maintain and extend the tool to make it better.