Cheat Sheet

This content was generated with the assistance of AI and should be verified against the official documentation before being relied on in production.

This sub-section’s WordPress bibliography lists the reference material consulted while preparing these pages.

A single-page, colour-coded summary of every topic of this sub-section: the platform (request lifecycle, core directories, the twelve core tables, version numbering and requirements), using WordPress (settings screens, roles, post statuses, editor shortcuts and media formats), administration (wp-config.php production values, Apache 2.4 and nginx rules, permissions, auto-updates, hardening, caching layers, cron, debugging and Multisite), block and classic themes, plugin and block development, the APIs, tooling and delivery, headless and AI, and a strip of what changed since older books and tutorials. It reflects WordPress 7.1.3 (examples tested; WordPress 7.1.4, released on 2026-10-28, is the current security release and should be used in production; 7.2 is planned for 2026-12-08), PHP 7.4 minimum with 8.3 or later recommended, theme.json version 3, Gutenberg 24.2.0, @wordpress/scripts 37.0.0, @wordpress/create-block 5.0.0, @wordpress/env 12.0.0, WP-CLI 2.12.0 and WPCS 3.4.1, checked on 2026-10-28, and is available as a downloadable PDF. A "Cloud deployment" block summarises the database, state placement, cron, release steps and key commands for the cloud deployment pages (checked on 2026-10-29).

For the full explanation, every option, and complete examples, see the dedicated pages:

Overview — WordPress.

Getting Started — Introduction and Architecture, Versions and Release Cycle, Requirements and Hosting, Installation, Local Development Environments, and Database Schema.

Using WordPress — Dashboard and Admin Screens, Block Editor for Authors, Posts and Pages, Media Library, Categories, Tags and Comments, Users, Roles and Profiles, Settings Screens, Site Editor and Global Styles, Patterns for Site Builders, Choosing and Managing Plugins and Themes, SEO, Analytics and Privacy, and Importing, Exporting and Migrating.

Administration — wp-config.php Reference, Web Servers: Apache and nginx, File Permissions and Filesystem, Updates and Auto-Updates, Security Hardening, Backups and Disaster Recovery, Performance and Caching, Scaling and High Availability, WP-Cron and Scheduled Tasks, Email Delivery, Debugging, Site Health and Troubleshooting, and Multisite Networks.

Block Themes — Themes Overview, Templates and Template Parts, Template Hierarchy, theme.json Settings, theme.json Styles, Typography and Fonts, Theme Patterns, Style Variations and Section Styles, Navigation and Menus, Child Themes, Create Block Theme and Version Control, and Theme Accessibility and Releasing.

Classic Themes — Classic Theme Anatomy and The Loop, functions.php, Theme Supports and Assets, Customizer API, Widgets and Sidebars, Hybrid Themes and Migration to Block Themes, and Page Builders and Commercial Themes.

Plugin Development — Plugin Fundamentals, Hooks: Actions and Filters, Security for Developers, Custom Post Types and Taxonomies, Metadata and Custom Fields, Administration Menus and Settings API, Shortcodes, Roles and Capabilities API, JavaScript, AJAX and Heartbeat, Internationalization, Privacy and Personal Data, and Publishing to the Plugin Directory.

Block Development — Block Development Environment, block.json and Registration, Static and Dynamic Blocks, Attributes, Supports and InnerBlocks, Variations, Styles, Transforms and Deprecations, Block Bindings API, Block Hooks, Interactivity API, Data Layer and Editor Extensibility, and Components, DataViews and Admin Screens.

APIs & Data — WP_Query and the Database API, Options, Transients and Object Cache, HTTP and Filesystem APIs, Rewrite API and Permalinks, Authentication and Login API, REST API: Using It, REST API: Extending It, Images and Media API, and Multisite Development.

Tooling & Delivery — WP-CLI, Coding Standards and Static Analysis, Testing, Composer-Based WordPress, Deployment and CI/CD, Containers, Docker and Kubernetes, and Playground and Blueprints.

Cloud deployment — Cloud Reference Architecture, Managed Database: RDS and Aurora, Media: S3 Offload, EFS and CloudFront, Object Cache, Sessions and Cron in a Cluster, EKS Infrastructure with OpenTofu, Deploying on EKS with Helm, Releases, Upgrades and Autoscaling on Kubernetes, Migrating from a Single Server, and Google Cloud, Azure and Alternatives to Kubernetes.

Headless & AI — Headless WordPress, Abilities API and MCP Adapter, and AI Client and Connectors.

Reference — Where Older Books and Tutorials Are Outdated, Comparison & Decision Guide, and Cheat Sheet (PDF).

Cloud deployment

The summary printed in the PDF for running WordPress on many pods in the cloud on Amazon EKS (checked on 2026-10-29); each row is explained on the pages above.

Topic Rule

Database

RDS for MariaDB 11.8 or MySQL 8.4 (Aurora MySQL 3 too), Multi-AZ, TLS with a verified CA through MYSQL_CLIENT_FLAGS and a db.php drop-in; an application user plus a separate migration user; keep pods x pm.max_children below max_connections.

State placement

Media: offload plugin and S3 behind CloudFront (EFS only as fallback; PHP code never on EFS). Object cache: ElastiCache for Valkey with WP_REDIS_*. Sessions: none (cookies and session_tokens). Configuration: environment variables read by wp-config.php; image immutable with DISALLOW_FILE_MODS.

Cron

DISABLE_WP_CRON true; one CronJob with concurrencyPolicy: Forbid running wp cron event run --due-now; web pods never schedule.

Release steps

Build one image per Git SHA, push to ECR, helm upgrade with a pre-upgrade Job running wp core update-db (add --network on Multisite), rolling update, --rollback-on-failure (Helm 4; --atomic in Helm 3).

Key commands

wp redis status, wp cron event list, wp core update-db, wp search-replace, kubectl -n lumenpress rollout status deployment/lumenpress-web, helm upgrade lumenpress ./lumenpress-wordpress.

Download

Download the WordPress Cheat Sheet (PDF)

References