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Playground for Plugin Developers

The WordPress Playground is an innovative tool that allows plugin developers to build, test and showcase their plugins directly in a browser environment.

This guide will show you how to use WordPress Playground to improve your plugin development workflow, create live demos to showcase your plugin, and simplify your plugin testing and review.

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Discover how to Build, Test, and Launch your products with WordPress Playground in the About Playground section.

Launching a Playground instance with a plugin​

Plugin in the WordPress themes directory​

With WordPress Playground, you can quickly launch a WordPress installation with almost any plugin available in the WordPress Plugins Directory installed and activated. All you need to do is to add the plugin query parameter to the Playground URL and use the slug of the plugin from the WordPress directory as a value. For example: https://playground.wordpress.net/?plugin=create-block-theme

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You can install and activate several plugins via query parameters by repeating the plugin parameter for every plugin you want to be installed and activated in the Playground instance. For example: https://playground.wordpress.net/?plugin=gutenberg&plugin=akismet&plugin=wordpress-seo.

You can also load any plugin from the WordPress plugins directory by setting the installPlugin step of a Blueprint passed to the Playground instance.

{
    "landingPage": "/wp-admin/plugins.php",
    "login": true,
    "steps": [
        {
            "step": "installPlugin",
            "pluginZipFile": {
                "resource": "wordpress.org/plugins",
                "slug": "gutenberg"
            }
        }
    ]
}

   Run Blueprint   

Blueprints can be passed to a Playground instance in several ways.

Plugin in a GitHub repository​

A plugin stored in a GitHub repository can also be loaded in a Playground instance via Blueprints.

With the pluginZipFile property of the installPlugin blueprint step, you can define a url resource that points to the location of the .zip file containing the plugin you want to load in the Playground instance.

To avoid CORS issues, the Playground project provides a GitHub proxy that allows you to generate a .zip from a repository (or even a folder inside a repo) containing your plugin.

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GitHub proxy is an incredibly useful tool to load plugins from GitHub repositories as it allows you to load a plugin from a specific branch, a specific directory, a specific commit or a specific PR.

For example, the following blueprint.json installs a plugin from a GitHub repository leveraging the https://github-proxy.com tool:

{
    "landingPage": "/wp-admin/admin.php?page=add-media-from-third-party-service",
    "login": true,
    "steps": [
        {
            "step": "installPlugin",
            "pluginZipFile": {
                "resource": "url",
                "url": "https://github-proxy.com/proxy/?repo=wptrainingteam/devblog-dataviews-plugin"
            }
        }
    ]
}

   Run Blueprint   

Plugin from code in a file or gist in GitHub​

By combining the writeFile and activatePlugin steps you can also launch a WP Playground instance with a plugin built on the fly from code stored on a gist or a file in GitHub:

{
    "landingPage": "/wp-admin/plugins.php",
    "login": true,
    "steps": [
        {
            "step": "login"
        },
        {
            "step": "writeFile",
            "path": "/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/cpt-books.php",
            "data": {
                "resource": "url",
                "url": "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/WordPress/blueprints/trunk/blueprints/custom-post/books.php"
            }
        },
        {
            "step": "activatePlugin",
            "pluginPath": "cpt-books.php"
        }
    ]
}

   Run Blueprint   

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The Install plugin from a gist example in the Blueprints Gallery shows how to load a plugin from code in a gist

Setting up a demo for your plugin with Blueprints​

When providing a link to a WordPress Playground instance with some plugins activated, you may also want to customize the initial setup for that Playground instance using those plugins. With Playground's Blueprints you can load/activate plugins and configure the Playground instance.

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Some useful tools and resources provided by the Playground project to work with blueprints are:

  • Check the Blueprints Gallery to explore real-world code examples of using WordPress Playground to launch a WordPress site with a variety of setups.
  • The WordPress Playground Step Library tool provides a visual interface to drag or click the steps to create a blueprint for WordPress Playground. You can also create your own steps!
  • The Blueprints builder tool allows you edit your blueprint online and run it directly in a Playground instance.

Through properties and steps in the Blueprint, you can configure the Playground instance's initial setup, providing your plugins with the content and configuration needed for showcasing your plugin's compelling features and functionality.

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A great demo with WordPress Playground might require that you load default content for your plugin and theme, including images and other assets. Check out the Providing content for your demo guide to learn more about this.

plugins​

If your plugin has dependencies on other plugins you can use the plugins shorthand to install yours along with any other needed plugins.

{
    "landingPage": "/wp-admin/plugins.php",
    "plugins": ["gutenberg", "sql-buddy", "create-block-theme"],
    "login": true
}

   Run Blueprint   

landingPage​

If your plugin has a settings view or onboarding wizard, you can use the landingPage shorthand to automatically redirect to any page in the Playground instance upon loading.

{
    "landingPage": "/wp-admin/admin.php?page=my-custom-gutenberg-app",
    "login": true,
    "plugins": ["https://raw.githubusercontent.com/WordPress/block-development-examples/deploy/zips/data-basics-59c8f8.zip"]
}

   Run Blueprint   

writeFile​

With the writeFile step you can create any plugin file on the fly, referencing code from a *.php file stored on a GitHub or Gist.

Here’s an example of a plugin that generates Custom Post Types, placed in the mu-plugins folder to ensure the code runs automatically on load:

{
    "landingPage": "/wp-admin/",
    "login": true,
    "steps": [
        {
            "step": "writeFile",
            "path": "/wordpress/wp-content/mu-plugins/books.php",
            "data": {
                "resource": "url",
                "url": "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wordpress/blueprints/trunk/blueprints/custom-post/books.php"
            }
        }
    ]
}

Plugin Development​

Local plugin development and testing with Playground​

From a plugins' folder in your local development environment, you can quickly load locally a Playground instance with that plugin loaded and activated.

Use the wp-now command from your plugin's root directory using your preferred command line program.

With Visual Studio Code IDE, you can also use the Visual Studio Code extension while working in the root directory of your plugin.

For example:

git clone git@github.com:wptrainingteam/devblog-dataviews-plugin.git
cd devblog-dataviews-plugin
npx @wp-now/wp-now start

See your local changes in a Playground instance and directly create PRs in a GitHub repo with your changes​

With Google Chrome you can synchronize a Playground instance with your local plugin's code and your plugin's GitHub repo. With this connection you can:

  • See live (in the Playground instance) your local changes
  • Create PRs in the GitHub repo with your changes

Here's a little demo of this workflow in action:

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Check About Playground > Build > Synchronize your playground instance with a local folder and create Github Pull Requests for more info.