WordPress walkthrough

End-to-end: from lerd install to a WordPress site running on https://myblog.test with MySQL.

Prerequisites

You've already run lerd install once on this machine. If not, see Installation.

Drive it from your AI assistant

Run lerd mcp:enable-global once and your AI assistant (Claude Code, Cursor, Junie, Codex, Gemini, Copilot, Antigravity, Windsurf) can call every command below through the grouped MCP tools: site action: "link", env action: "setup", framework action: "setup", db action: "create", site action: "tls_enable", etc. See AI Integration.

---

1. Download WordPress

wp-cli

cd ~/Lerd
wp core download --path=myblog

curl + tar

cd ~/Lerd
mkdir myblog && cd myblog
curl -O https://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz
tar -xzf latest.tar.gz --strip-components=1
rm latest.tar.gz

Then create the config file from the sample that ships with it:

cd ~/Lerd/myblog
cp wp-config-sample.php wp-config.php

Do this before linking. wp-config.php is where lerd writes WordPress's configuration, and it only writes into a file that already exists; a project without one gets a .env that WordPress never reads.

---

2. Register the site

lerd link

lerd link detects WordPress (via wp-login.php or wp-config.php), assigns http://myblog.test, and serves from the project root. Detection reads the version out of wp-includes/version.php and pulls the matching definition, wordpress@7 for a current download, from the framework store. There is nothing to register by hand.

---

3. Configure PHP and start MySQL

lerd init

? PHP version: 8.3
? Node version (clear to follow the lerd default instead of pinning): 22
? Enable HTTPS? Yes
? Services: [mysql]
Saved .lerd.yaml

Workers are not shown; the WordPress definition declares none.

Picking MySQL is all the database setup there is. lerd init starts the container, creates myblog and myblog_testing inside it, and rewrites the connection constants in wp-config.php:

define( 'DB_NAME',     'myblog' );
define( 'DB_USER',     'root' );
define( 'DB_PASSWORD', 'lerd' );
define( 'DB_HOST',     'lerd-mysql' );

WordPress keeps its configuration as PHP constants rather than in a .env, so lerd reads and writes wp-config.php directly. That is also what tells lerd the site owns a database, which is what makes lerd db:import, lerd db:shell and the dashboard's database panel work against it.

Database credentials

Setting	Value
Host	lerd-mysql
Port	3306
User	root
Password	lerd
Database	myblog

These come from the lerd built-in MySQL service. See Services.

---

4. Generate the salts

wp-config-sample.php ships its authentication keys as placeholders, and because the file now exists WordPress goes straight to the installer without ever offering to write real ones. Replace that block yourself:

wp config shuffle-salts

Without wp-cli, paste the output of https://api.wordpress.org/secret-key/1.1/salt/ over the placeholder block in wp-config.php.

---

5. Finish the HTTPS wiring

Answering yes to HTTPS in the wizard already issued a trusted local cert via mkcert, switched the vhost, and set WP_HOME in wp-config.php to https://myblog.test. On a site linked without it, lerd secure myblog does the same thing later.

WordPress keeps its canonical URL in a second constant that lerd leaves alone, so set that one yourself:

// wp-config.php
define( 'WP_SITEURL', 'https://myblog.test' );

(Or update the same value in Settings > General from the WordPress admin.)

---

6. Open it

lerd open

Walk through the five-minute install (admin user, site title, password). When you're done, https://myblog.test/wp-admin is your dashboard.

---

7. Verify

lerd status

myblog should be listed as active and mysql as running. Live nginx and PHP-FPM logs are in the Web UI at http://127.0.0.1:7073, and anything WordPress writes to wp-content/debug.log shows up under App Logs.

---

What just happened

Command	What it did
lerd link	Detected WordPress, fetched wordpress@7 from the store, assigned myblog.test, set document root to project root
lerd init	Wrote .lerd.yaml with PHP 8.3 and the MySQL service, created myblog and myblog_testing inside lerd-mysql
lerd env (via init)	Wrote DB_NAME, DB_USER, DB_PASSWORD and DB_HOST into wp-config.php
lerd secure (via init)	Issued mkcert TLS, switched the vhost to HTTPS, set WP_HOME

---

Next steps

• Frameworks & Workers: add log paths or custom workers (e.g. wp cron event run) with a user overlay
• Database: lerd db:import to load a production dump, lerd db:shell for quick queries
• Services: add a Mailpit service to capture outgoing mail in dev
• HTTPS: wildcard certs for multi-site or git worktrees
• AI Integration (MCP): drive lerd from Claude Code, Cursor, Junie, etc.