{"id":665,"date":"2021-05-08T15:57:37","date_gmt":"2021-05-08T15:57:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mklasen.com\/?p=665"},"modified":"2022-04-29T21:29:37","modified_gmt":"2022-04-29T21:29:37","slug":"creating-a-wordpress-sandbox-environment-with-cloudways","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mklasen.com\/creating-a-wordpress-sandbox-environment-with-cloudways\/","title":{"rendered":"Creating a WordPress Sandbox environment that resets hourly with Cloudways"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>I&#8217;ve had multiple occasions where I just wanted to try something on a clean install in WordPress. Today we&#8217;re setting this up in Cloudways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Don&#8217;t have a server running yet?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Click here to get started: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cloudways.com\/en\/?id=713055\">https:\/\/www.cloudways.com\/en\/?id=713055<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em> (yup, that&#8217;s an affiliate link)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>My requirements<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>An environment that resets itself every hour<\/li><li>The database is reset, as well as everything in the wp-content folder<\/li><li>Show a countdown timer in the top that shows how much time is left before it resets<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Let&#8217;s get this ball rolling<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We&#8217;ll start by creating a new application in Cloudways. I&#8217;ve called it wpsandbox and attached a domain, let&#8217;s call it wpsandbox.example.com. I&#8217;ve also added an SSL certificate. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Creating the reset script<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Basically, we need to run two commands every 60 minutes, let&#8217;s start by adding a cronjob that runs a shell script. <a href=\"https:\/\/support.cloudways.com\/how-to-connect-to-your-application-using-sftp-ssh\/\">Login to your server via SSH<\/a> and create a file called <code>reset-sandbox.sh<\/code> in <code>~\/scripts<\/code>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><code>mkdir ~\/scripts<\/code><br><code>nano ~\/scripts\/reset-sandbox.sh<\/code><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Inside of that file we&#8217;ll add some commands: <em>(~\/sites\/wpsandbox is a symlink to ~\/applications\/APPLICATION_ID\/public_html)<\/em><code><br>cd ~\/sites\/wpsandbox\/<\/code><br><code>wp db reset --yes<\/code><br><code>rm -rf wp-content\/plugins\/*<\/code><br><code>rm -rf wp-content\/themes\/*<\/code><br><code>rm -rf wp-content\/uploads\/*<\/code><br><code>wp core download --force<\/code><br><code>wp core install --url=https:\/\/wpsandbox.example.com --title=\"WP Sandbox\" --admin_user=admin --admin_password=password --admin_email=admin@example.com<\/code><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Good, save and exit the editor with control-O and control-X.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Adding the script as a cronjob<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Cloudways has a UI for adding cronjobs. Go to your application and click Cron Job Management in the sidebar. Open the Advanced tab and add the following line:<br><code>0 * * * * \/home\/master\/scripts\/reset-sandbox.sh<\/code><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Adding the countdown timer<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Before getting into custom code, let&#8217;s see if there are any countdown timer plugins that work for us. There might be a plugin that we can re-configure automatically whenever the installation is reset.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>After a bit of research, it doesn&#8217;t seem like there are plugins that add this code to the top, which is what I wanted. So I&#8217;ll write a quick must-use plugin that displays a shortcode which will be rendered by another plugin. I also need to make sure this plugin cannot be disabled and is re-installed on each new install.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I found a plugin called Event Countdown Timer here: https:\/\/wordpress.org\/plugins\/event-countdown-timer\/ which suits our needs. We&#8217;ll use the following shortcode:<br><code>[tme_countdown background_color=\"#fff\" time_box_color=\"#fff\" time_text_color=\"#000\" time_title_color=\"#000\" countdown_datetime=\"2021\/05\/08 17:04\" countdown_timezone=\"UTC\"]<\/code><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The mu-plugin I came up with:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-code\"><code><?php\nadd_action('wp_body_open', function() {\n        $date = new Datetime();\n        $date->modify('+1 hour');\n\n        $date->setTime($date->format('H'), 0);\n\n        echo '<style>.tme-countdown {max-width: 100%; background: #fff; display: flex; align-items: center; justify-content: center; font-size: 12px; } .tme-countdown-container { width: auto !important;} .tme-countdown .widget-title { font-size: 15px; }$\n        echo do_shortcode('&#91;tme_countdown title=\"This sandbox will reset in:\" img_link=\"\" background_color=\"#fff\" time_box_color=\"#fff\" time_text_color=\"#000\" time_title_color=\"#000\" countdown_datetime=\"'.$date->format('Y\/m\/d H:i').'\" countdown_timezone$\n});\n\nadd_action('admin_init', function() {\n        if ( !is_plugin_active('event-countdown-timer\/tme-countdown.php')) {\n                activate_plugins('event-countdown-timer\/tme-countdown.php');\n        }\n});<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n<p>The last thing we need to do is install this plugin on every wipe. Let&#8217;s add the following line to our bash script:<br><code>wp plugin install event-countdown-timer --activate<\/code><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That&#8217;s it! Since our cronjob is set to run every hour, and the countdown timer is set to countdown to the next hour, they&#8217;ll work together flawlessly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve had multiple occasions where I just wanted to try something on a clean install in WordPress. Today we&#8217;re setting this up in Cloudways. Don&#8217;t have a server running yet? Click here to get started: https:\/\/www.cloudways.com\/en\/?id=713055 (yup, that&#8217;s an affiliate link) My requirements An environment that resets itself every hour The database is reset, as [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Creating a WordPress Sandbox environment that resets hourly with Cloudways - Marinus Klasen<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/mklasen.com\/creating-a-wordpress-sandbox-environment-with-cloudways\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"nl_NL\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Creating a WordPress Sandbox environment that resets hourly with Cloudways - Marinus Klasen\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I&#8217;ve had multiple occasions where I just wanted to try something on a clean install in WordPress. 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