Knowledgebase

WP-CLI is a command-line tool for managing WordPress installations. It allows you to download, configure, and install WordPress without using a browser or control panel.

This method requires SSH access to the server.

Prerequisites

• SSH access to the server
• A MySQL database and database user already created for the site
• The document root of the domain must be empty or not yet containing a WordPress installation

Steps

1. Navigate to the Document Root

Change to the directory where WordPress should be installed - typically public_html or a subdirectory:

cd ~/public_html

2. Download WordPress Core Files

wp core download

This downloads the latest version of WordPress into the current directory.

3. Create the wp-config.php File

wp config create --dbname=your_database --dbuser=your_db_user --dbpass='your_db_password' --dbhost=localhost

Replace your_database, your_db_user, and your_db_password with the actual database credentials. The password must be wrapped in single quotes - database passwords often contain special characters such as !, =, or $ that the shell will misinterpret if the value is unquoted or double-quoted.

4. Install WordPress

wp core install --url="https://example.com" --title="Site Title" --admin_user="admin" --admin_password="securepassword" --admin_email="[email protected]"

Replace the values with the appropriate site URL, title, and admin credentials.

5. Verify the Installation

wp core version

This should return the installed WordPress version, confirming the installation was successful.

Useful Additional Commands

Troubleshooting

PHP memory exhausted error

If you see an error like:

PHP Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 134217728 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 36864 bytes) in phar:///usr/local/bin/wp/...

This means PHP's memory limit (128MB by default) is too low for WP-CLI to complete the operation. Prefix your command with php -d memory_limit=512M to override the limit for that run:

php -d memory_limit=512M /usr/local/bin/wp core download
php -d memory_limit=512M /usr/local/bin/wp core install --url="https://example.com" ...

This only applies to the single command - it does not change the server's PHP configuration permanently.

Notes

• If WP-CLI is not available, contact 20i Support team to confirm whether it is installed.
• Always use a strong admin password - avoid using default or obvious values.
• The --allow-root flag may be required if running commands as the root user, though this is not recommended.