WordPress on App Engine Standard for PHP 7.2

This is a simple command-line tool for downloading and configuring WordPress on App Engine Standard for PHP 7.2.

Common Prerequisites

• Create a new Cloud Project using the Cloud Console
• Enable Billing on that project
• Install Google Cloud SDK
• Enable Cloud SQL API
• Install Composer

Create and configure a Cloud SQL for MySQL instance

Note: In this guide, we use wordpress for the instance name and the database name. We use root for the database user name.

1. Create a new Cloud SQL for MySQL Second Generation instance with the following command:

   $ gcloud sql instances create wordpress \
       --activation-policy=ALWAYS \
       --tier=db-n1-standard-1

   Note: you can choose db-f1-micro or db-g1-small instead of db-n1-standard-1 for the Cloud SQL machine type, especially for the development or testing purpose. However, those machine types are not recommended for production use and are not eligible for Cloud SQL SLA coverage. See our Cloud SQL SLA for more details.

2. Next, create the database you want your WordPress site to use:

   $ gcloud sql databases create wordpress --instance wordpress

3. Finally, change the root password for your instance:

   $ gcloud sql users set-password root \
       --host=% \
       --instance wordpress \
       --password=YOUR_INSTANCE_ROOT_PASSWORD # Don't use this password!

Create or Update a WordPress project for App Engine

The wordpress.php command provides a convenient way for you to either create a new WordPress project or add the required configuration to an existing one.

Setup

1. Download this repository and cd into the appengine/php72/wordpress directory

   $ git clone https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/php-docs-samples.git
   $ cd php-docs-samples/appengine/php72/wordpress

2. Install the dependencies in this directory using composer

   $ composer install

   Note If you receive an error about extensions, install phar and zip PHP extensions and retry.

Create a new WordPress Project

To download WordPress and set it up for Google Cloud, run the create command:

$ php wordpress.php create

The command asks you several questions, please answer them. Then you'll have a new WordPress project. By default it will create my-wordpress-project in the current directory.

Note: To determine the region your database is in, run gcloud sql instances describe wordpress

Update an existing WordPress Project

If you are migrating an existing project to Google Cloud, you can use the update command:

$ php wordpress.php update path/to/your-wordpress-site

The command asks you several questions, please answer them. This will copy the files in the files directory and write the proper configuration. Then your WordPress project will be ready to deploy to Google Cloud!

Deploy to Google Cloud

cd into the root of your WordPress project.

$ cd my-wordpress-project

Run the following command to deploy your project to App Engine:

$ gcloud app deploy app.yaml cron.yaml

Now you can access your site, and continue the installation step! The URL is https://PROJECT_ID.appspot.com/

Enable the Google Cloud Storage plugin

To use the Google Cloud Storage plugin for media uploads, follow these steps.

1. Configure the App Engine default GCS bucket for later use. The default App Engine bucket is named YOUR_PROJECT_ID.appspot.com. Change the default Access Control List (ACL) of that bucket as follows:

   $ gsutil defacl ch -u AllUsers:R gs://YOUR_PROJECT_ID.appspot.com
   

2. Go to the Dashboard at https://PROJECT_ID.appspot.com/wp-admin. On the Plugins page, activate the Google Cloud Storage plugin.
3. In the plugins Settings page, set your Bucket name to the bucket you configured in Step 1.

After activating the plugin, try uploading a media object in a new post and confirm the image is uploaded to the GCS bucket by visiting the Google Cloud console's Storage page.

Local Development

To access this MySQL instance, use Cloud SQL Proxy. Download it to your local computer and make it executable.

Go to the the Credentials section of your project in the Console. Click 'Create credentials' and then click 'Service account key.' For the Service account, select 'App Engine app default service account.' Then click 'Create' to create and download the JSON service account key to your local machine. Save it to a safe place.

Run the proxy by the following command:

$ cloud_sql_proxy \
    -dir /cloudsql \
    -instances=YOUR_PROJECT_ID:us-central1:wordpress \
    -credential_file=/path/to/YOUR_SERVICE_ACCOUNT_JSON_FILE.json

Note: Make sure to run the command under a user with write access in the /cloudsql directory. This proxy will use this folder to create a unix socket.

Now you can access the Cloud SQL instance with the MySQL client in a separate command line tab.

$ mysql --socket /cloudsql/YOUR_PROJECT_ID:us-central1:wordpress -u root -p
mysql> use database wordpress;
mysql> show tables;
mysql> exit

Various Workflows

Install and Update WordPress, Plugins, and Themes

Because the wp-content directory on the server is read-only, you have to perform all code updates locally. Run WordPress locally and update the plugins and themes in the local Dashboard, deploy the code to production, then activate them in the production Dashboard. You can also use the wp-cli utility as follows (be sure to keep the Cloud SQL proxy running):

# Install the wp-cli utility
$ composer require wp-cli/wp-cli-bundle
# Now you can run the "wp" command to update Wordpress itself
$ vendor/bin/wp core update --path=wordpress
# You can also update all the plugins and themes
$ vendor/bin/wp plugin update --all
$ vendor/bin/wp theme update --all

If you get the following error:

Failed opening required 'google/appengine/api/urlfetch_service_pb.php'

You can set a WP_CLI_PHP_ARGS environment variable to add include_path PHP configuration for wp-cli.

$ export WP_CLI_PHP_ARGS='-d include_path=vendor/google/appengine-php-sdk'

Then try the above commands again.

Remove Plugins and Themes

First deactivate them in the production Dashboard, then remove them completely locally. The next deployment will remove those files from the production environment.