Running the site

Once the setup wizard is complete, the site view shows a Start dev server button. This starts a local WordPress that serves the code in your site's build/ directory, so you can see your changes running.

Start and stop

Click Start dev server. The button cycles through three states:

• Start dev server — nothing is running.
• Starting dev server... — the server is booting. A "Dev server is starting…" line below the button shows the elapsed time.
• Stop dev server — the server is up. The button shows a red dot; clicking it stops the server.

When the server is ready, its URL appears below the button, for example http://127.0.0.1:<port>/, with a wp-admin link beside it. Click either to open the site in your default browser.

The button is disabled while a trunk update is running. The reverse is no longer true: an update can run with the server up, because it pauses the build watch for the rebuild and leaves the server serving — see Applying patches and PRs and Staying up to date with trunk.

Logging in

Every site uses the same credentials, shown next to the URL:

• Username: admin
• Password: password

The wp-admin link next to the site URL opens the dashboard directly. It appears in both places the URL does: the setup checklist step and the site page.

What the dev server actually runs

The dev server is not a stub — it is WordPress Playground running your checkout:

• The app spawns the Playground CLI (@wp-playground/cli) in server mode, with your site's build/ directory mounted as the WordPress root. PHP runs as WebAssembly inside the bundled Node.js runtime, so no PHP install is needed.
• The database is SQLite, stored inside the Playground instance. This covers most core contribution work; if a ticket specifically needs MySQL behaviour, this environment cannot reproduce it.
• The server binds to the loopback interface only. It is reachable from your machine, not from the rest of your network.
• Outgoing mail is captured locally instead of being sent — see Mail.

The build watch

The build watcher compiles what you edit under src/ into build/, which is what the server actually serves. It has its own Start build watch button next to the dev-server button, and its own status dot:

Dot	State
Green	Watching. It stays green while it recompiles a save — that is its normal working state.
Amber	Either the one-off full build that runs before the watch can start on a site that has never been built, or the watch paused while another action owns the build directory.
Red	It exited on its own. Read the Build watcher log tab to find out why.
Grey	Stopped.

The watch and the server are independent in both directions:

• Starting the dev server starts the watch first (building once if the site has no build/ yet), then serves.
• Stopping the dev server leaves the watch running, so you can keep compile-on-save going without a server.
• The watch exiting never touches the server.
• You can start and stop the watch on its own, at any time, whether or not a server is up.

While the watch is running, applying a patch or updating trunk uses it rather than fighting it. A patch that does not move package-lock.json is applied and left for the watch to recompile — the checklist shows the build step skipped and names the watch as doing it. One that does move the lockfile has to install and build, so it pauses the watch for the duration and resumes it after, with the PHP server up throughout.

Its output goes to its own Build watcher log tab, not to the terminal, and it no longer holds the terminal's "running" lock — so the terminal and one-shot actions stay available while it runs.

DB inspect (Adminer)

While the server is running, a DB inspect (Adminer) link joins the site URL and wp-admin on the same row. It opens Adminer, a database browser, against the site's SQLite database — useful for inspecting what a code change wrote. See Database for details.

The link disappears when the server stops, because there is no database to connect to.

Where the output goes

The server's output goes to the Server tab of the Logs section, and the watcher's to its own Build watcher tab; startup errors land there too. The terminal panel is for the commands you type. See Logs and debugging and Terminal.