Many thanks to the 56 people who took our first user survey. We appreciate your time in helping us understand how WP-CLI is being adopted by the community.

By the numbers

Almost 3/4 of respondents use WP-CLI actively

53% use WP-CLI multiple times per day, 20% use it a couple or few times per week, and 26% use it infrequently or rarely. 46% of respondents use WP-CLI interactively at the command line, 34% have incorporated it into bash scripts, and 18% are using WP-CLI with Puppet, Chef, or another provisioning system.

WP-CLI is largely used to install and update

Even with its variety of commands, WP-CLI is largely used to install and update. 37.5% of respondents reported using WP-CLI to install WordPress (with 30.36% using it to update WordPress), and 32.14% reported using it to update plugins and themes.

After code management, WP-CLI is popularly used (23.21%) to perform migrations. Respondents reported using wp db export and wp db import in conjunction with wp search-replace, or wp export and wp import.

A subset of respondents reported using WP-CLI to perform specialized tasks, including:

Only 38% have used community packages

WP-CLI now has 24 community packages listed in its Package Index. A good 62% percent of respondents will have the good fortune in the future to discover a helpful community package.

Feature requests

Remotely manage WordPress instances

The most common thread amongst respondents is the desire to run WP-CLI commands in one place across multiple machines. Depending on what you have access to, there are a couple of current ways to do this:

  1. If you have SSH access, X-Team’s WP-CLI SSH uses your SSH connection to run WP-CLI commands on a remote machine.
  2. The WP Remote CLI project proxies a subset of WP-CLI commands through WP Remote.

Better documentation

A substantial number of users requested better examples for the website. Let this be a call for contributions! Because all of the command docs are generated from the source code, adding examples or clarifying usage notes is just a pull request away.

Alternatively, you can share your shell tips, or contribute a blog post on how you’ve integrated WP-CLI into your workflow.

Grab bag of enhancements

If you have time to put together a pull request or community package, here’s a short list of requested enhancements:

  • Git awareness: have plugin/core updates result in git commits (with automatically-generated messages).
  • Yum integration for yum install wp-cli, yum check-update and yum update wp-cli.
  • Faster algorithm for the search-replace command when dealing with large databases.
  • Manage file and folder permissions for WordPress installs.
  • Reset all users passwords.
  • “Break in Windows less.”

WP-CLI commands to prepare meals

A good 7% of you think WP-CLI is capable of making your meals, asking for it to “make breakfast”, “make coffee ;-)”, or “dishes?”. While we can’t make any promises, we’ll continue to think about WP-CLI over breakfast and see if we get inspired.