How to use Git with InstantWP

If you are using the amazing free InstantWP WordPress development package often, then you might start wondering how to properly use it with Git version control. The difficulty is that trying to add the entire Linux Alpine virtual operating system to Git is too heavy, but adding only the contents of the Theme folder will not keep track of your posts and other database related content. I will outline the steps I used to get Git working with IWP below:

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Run a simple lightweight Python server

When you are developing websites you often run into the need to test them on a server environment, because browsers block websites with certain features from running locally.

Here is a really quick way to run such a website in a server environment using Python 3 (which you probably have already installed on your machine anyways).

  1. Open the command window where your website root folder is. One easy way of doing that is simply typing “cmd” in the Windows Explorer address bar.
  2. Type this command in the command window:
python -m http.server 8000
  1. Now simply go to http://127.0.0.1:8000/ in your browser.

If you are getting errors regarding script files with that simple version, you can also try this longer code:

python
#Use to create local host
import http.server
import socketserver

PORT = 1337

Handler = http.server.SimpleHTTPRequestHandler
Handler.extensions_map.update({
      ".js": "application/javascript",
});

httpd = socketserver.TCPServer(("", PORT), Handler)
httpd.serve_forever()

And open that with:

http://127.0.0.1:1337/

Unable to enter your WordPress password when trying to log-in? Here is an easy solution.

I recently encountered a problem in which it was impossible to login to the WordPress backend/admin area since the password field was not accepting any input. The same problem occurred on all the browsers I tested it in. It seems like an update might have broken something in a theme or a plugin. Finally there was an easy solution to the problem:

Just open the developer tools of your browser, target the password input field and delete the bit where it says “disabled” from the source code (displayed typically on the right side of you browser window in the Developer tools panel). Now the form field takes input again and you are able to login and update your plugins/theme if needed.

Examples of Brackets plus the Emmet extension

Here’s how the Emmet extension for Brackets can really speed up your workflow:

-type #mydiv and hit tab to get <div id=”mydiv”></div>
-type lorem and hit tab to get lorem ipsum text
-type #container>.col-sm-4*3 and hit tab to get
<div id=”container”>
<div class=”col-sm-4″></div>
<div class=”col-sm-4″></div>
<div class=”col-sm-4″></div>
</div>

Restore a WordPress site with just the Mysql-database file

Here’s how to restore a WordPress site to a new WordPress installation, perhaps at another web host:

1. Create a database, a database user and assign the user to the database. If this is too much trouble, you can use a one click installer as long as you then delete the WordPress installation files (keep a copy of the wp_config-file though) via FTP and drop all the tables from the database (doing this will give you the basic database setup).

2. Download WordPress, unzip and upload the files to the server

3. Go to your web-address and run the installation

4. OPTIONAL: If you have a backup of your old theme, upload the theme folder into the wp-content –> themes -folder and upload the “uploads” folder inside “wp-content” as well.

5. You site should now be up and running!