Set Up Basic WordPress CI for Stable Deployments

I got a call from a new client running a pretty busy WooCommerce shop. Their dev team was pushing updates, but every deployment was a gamble. One afternoon, a junior dev committed a small change, and suddenly, the entire checkout process went down. No errors, just a blank screen. It was a total mess, and they lost hours of sales trying to roll it back. The problem wasn’t the developer; it was the lack of a safety net. This is where setting up a basic WordPress continuous integration pipeline becomes a lifesaver.

My first instinct was to tell them to lock down their Git workflow. “Just enforce pull requests for everything,” I said. “Make sure a senior dev signs off before anything gets merged.” And they did. It helped, but it also slowed them down to a crawl. Code reviews were piling up, and deployments became these high-stress, all-hands-on-deck events. It was a band-aid, not a fix. The real issue was that all the checks were manual. Trust me on this, you can’t scale a business on manual checks.

What Is WordPress Continuous Integration, Really?

Forget the textbook definitions for a second. Think of Continuous Integration (CI) as an automated bouncer for your code. Before any new code gets into the main codebase, the bouncer automatically checks it to make sure it meets the standards. It runs checks for syntax errors, coding style violations, and—most importantly—it runs automated tests to ensure existing functionality isn’t broken. This concept is covered in great detail in a foundational post over at carlalexander.ca, but the practical side is where it gets interesting.

The goal is to catch problems seconds after a developer writes them, not hours later when a customer complains. It’s not about replacing developers; it’s about giving them tools to work faster and with more confidence. For WordPress, this usually means two key things: linting and running tests.

• Linting: This is just checking for style. Does the code follow the WordPress Coding Standards? Consistent code is easier for the whole team to read and maintain.
• Testing: This means running a suite of automated tests (like PHPUnit tests) to confirm that your plugin’s functions still work as expected. Did that last commit break the coupon code logic? The tests will tell you immediately.

Here’s the kicker: this all happens automatically. A developer pushes a commit, and a service like GitHub Actions kicks off the process. No manual intervention needed.

# .github/workflows/ci.yml
name: Run WordPress CI Checks

on: [push]

jobs:
  lint:
    name: "Lint PHP Code"
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v2

      - name: "Setup PHP with Composer"
        uses: shivammathur/setup-php@v2
        with:
          php-version: '8.1'
          tools: composer:v2
          coverage: none

      - name: "Install Composer dependencies"
        run: composer install --prefer-dist --no-progress

      - name: "Run PHP_CodeSniffer"
        run: vendor/bin/phpcs --standard=WordPress .

So, What’s the Point?

The point is stability. And sanity. By automating the tedious, error-prone parts of development, you free up your team to solve real problems. You stop putting out fires and start building features. For that WooCommerce client, we set up a simple GitHub Actions workflow. The next time a problematic commit was pushed, it was flagged and blocked in less than a minute. No more broken checkouts. No more panicked rollbacks. Just a clear signal that the code wasn’t ready. That’s it.

Look, this stuff gets complicated fast. If you’re tired of debugging someone else’s mess and just want your site to work, drop my team a line. We’ve probably seen it before.

What’s the one thing you wish you could automate in your deployment process?