What WP-CLI Is

WP-CLI is the official command-line tool for managing WordPress. It lets you update plugins, manage users, run search-and-replace across the database and much more without ever logging in to wp-admin.

Installing WP-CLI

curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wp-cli/builds/gh-pages/phar/wp-cli.phar
chmod +x wp-cli.phar
mv wp-cli.phar /usr/local/bin/wp
wp --info

💡 Run WP-CLI as the site user, not as root: sudo -u www-data wp ...

Essential Commands

Command	Description
wp core update	Update WordPress
wp plugin update --all	Update all plugins
wp theme list	List themes
wp user list	List users
wp db export backup.sql	Export the database
wp cache flush	Flush the cache

Search and Replace in the Database

# Migrating from HTTP to HTTPS
wp search-replace 'http://example.com' 'https://example.com' --all-tables

# Changing the domain
wp search-replace 'old-domain.com' 'new-domain.com' --all-tables --dry-run

⚠️ Always run --dry-run before the real replacement — it reports how many rows would change without changing anything.

Creating an Administrator Account

wp user create admin2 admin2@example.com   --role=administrator   --user_pass=StrongPass123!

Diagnosing WP-CLI errors

WP-CLI runs commands under the PHP CLI SAPI, not the web server, so some errors are specific to the command line itself.

Error text	Cause	What to do
Error: This does not seem to be a WordPress installation	The command was run outside the site root, so WP-CLI cannot find wp-load.php	Change into the directory with wp-config.php, or pass --path=/var/www/site
Error: Because "wpdb" is a global, we can not run this command	Code inside wp eval runs before WordPress has fully bootstrapped	Use wp eval-file and wait for the init hook inside the file
PHP Fatal error: Allowed memory size exhausted	The CLI SAPI memory_limit in php.ini is lower than what thousands of search-replace changes need	Temporarily raise the CLI memory_limit in a separate php.ini, or with the --require flag
Error establishing a database connection during wp core update-db	wp-config.php has the wrong DB_HOST or DB_USER after moving the site to a new server	Check the connection constants and re-run the command

If the error is specifically about changing the domain, see the separate article on changing a WordPress domain.

When WP-CLI is not the right tool

Hosting without SSH access (many shared plans) — there is physically nowhere to run WP-CLI
Bulk content edits in the Gutenberg block editor — a careless search-replace can break the serialized JSON attributes inside blocks
A multisite network with dozens of subdomains — every command needs the --url flag for the specific site, otherwise it hits the wrong table
Changes that need a visual check — design, layout, block placement — the CLI shows none of that; you need a browser and staging
Managing access rights and roles at the level of individual posts — WP-CLI manages roles as a whole, and fine-grained capability control on one post needs code or a plugin

It is also worth remembering file system permissions: by default, WP-CLI runs as whichever user invoked it. If you run a command as root on a site where the web server runs as www-data, the new or changed files end up not writable by the web server — plugins stop updating through the wp-admin interface.

Backing up and profiling before changes

Before any bulk operation with WP-CLI, take a database snapshot — restoring it is faster than untangling the consequences by hand.

wp db export --add-drop-table backup-before-migrate.sql
wp profile stage --url=example.com
wp transient delete --all

For the backup process itself, see the article on WordPress backup. Cleaning up unused tables and transients after bulk migrations should happen right after the checksum check, not be put off for later.

How to check that a command actually worked

After wp core update, verify the core checksums against the official repository
After updating plugins, verify the checksums of each plugin separately
After search-replace with --dry-run, compare the reported row count with the real run without the flag
After any migration, open the site in a browser and confirm no old domain remains in the links
Check the command's exit code with echo $? right after it runs — 0 means success, any other number means an error, even if the console output looked fine

wp core verify-checksums
wp plugin verify-checksums --all
echo $?  # 0 — checksums matched

If the command failed while updating WordPress core itself, cross-check it against the general VPS migration plan in the article on moving WordPress to a VPS.