WordPress Playground is this fascinating tool that allows you to run WordPress without a server. It achieves this by running PHP in your browser by using WASM. It sounds cool, and it makes for numerous interesting demos, as its original creator Adam Zielinski showed at WordCamp Europe 2024: WordPress Playground – use WordPress without a server (recording, slides).

Having built Translate Live for WordPress.org–a way to translate plugins and themes without having to use a table UI–I have a bit of experience with having WordPress Playground do more complex things. But I also know that it be a bit difficult to get started with that.

Blueprints to start a Playground

So, as you can see with Translate Live, a WordPress Playground can be booted into configurations, and these configurations are (currently) called Blueprints. They are JSONs made of options and a list of steps. You can choose from a number of available steps like installPlugin to share a link with someone to try something in WordPress without having to set up hosting for that.

The available steps are somewhat basic but powerful. It can be abstract to think of what to do with them.

So, I had the idea that while the available steps of WordPress Playground are quite universal, we could build a library of “more meaningful” steps that do and “transpile” them to existing steps.

Build a Playground Blueprint with a Drag and Drop UI

Welcome to the WordPress Playground Step Library: Combining these steps with a click (or drag and drop) UI, it allows you do quickly create a WordPress Playground that does things you didn’t know you could easily do. Here is a screenshot:

So, for example, it could be useful when you share a WordPress Playground link to add some explanatory text, and what better to use than the infamous1 Admin Notice? But, how do you do it?

Turns out, you’d need a small mu-plugin. But with a custom step, it’s just a matter of adding that step:

So such a “custom blueprint” for playground would be this:
{ "landingPage": "/", "steps": [ { "step": "showAdminNotice", "vars": { "text": "Welcome to WordPress Playground!" } } ]}
But careful. The above doesn’t run in Playground. There is no showAdminNotice step. But the Step Library automaticaly transpiles to a valid blueprint:
{ "landingPage": "/wp-admin/", "login": true, "steps": [ { "step": "mkdir", "path": "wordpress/wp-content/mu-plugins" }, { "step": "writeFile", "path": "wordpress/wp-content/mu-plugins/0-mu.php", "data": "<?php add_action( 'admin_notices', function() { echo '<div class=\"notice notice-success is-dismissible\"><p>Welcome to WordPress Playground!</p></div>'; } ); ?>" } ]}
So which one is easier to remember? You can try this blueprint in WordPress Playground now! It will look like this:

I’ve made the Step Library so when you configure it, its URL reflects to your custom steps (this is the above in the Step Library) so that you can easily share them. If you wanted to share the actual running playground, share the URL of the “Launch in Playground” link.

The Playground link will start with playground.wordpress.net/, the Step Library link with akirk.github.io/playground-ste….

The Step Library is hosted on Github and you can contribute your own steps! Also happy to receive new issues with ideas of what steps might be useful to add. There also the Blueprints Gallery that showcases further uses of Playground and is also open to contributions!

So far, I have added these steps:

• changeAdminColorScheme
• createUser
• customPostType
• deleteAllPosts
• sampleContent
• setLanguage (this one is coming soon to Playground natively!)
• setSiteName
• showAdminNotice

I’m curious if this tool can help you build a WordPress Playground, please tell me by commenting via Mastodon or ActivityPub, and spread the word about the tool!

Oh, and checkout the Awesome WordPress Playground link collection if you want to learn more about Playground or check out interesting applications! Happy playing!

1. This is traditionally misused by plugins to prompt you to upgrade so that your wp-admin screen can get bloated with this. To the point where there is an Admin Notices Manager plugin that allows you to keep them under control. ↩︎

JULIAN ASSANGE IS FREE

Julian Assange is free. He left Belmarsh maximum security prison on the morning of 24 June, after having spent 1901 days there. He was granted bail by the High Court in London and was released at Stanstead airport during the afternoon, where he boarded a plane and departed the UK.

This is the result of a global campaign that spanned grass-roots organisers, press freedom campaigners, legislators and leaders from across the political spectrum, all the way to the United Nations. This created the space for a long period of negotiations with the US Department of Justice, leading to a deal that has not yet been formally finalised. We will provide more information as soon as possible.

After more than five years in a 2x3 metre cell, isolated 23 hours a day, he will soon reunite with his wife Stella Assange, and their children, who have only known their father from behind bars.

WikiLeaks published groundbreaking stories of government corruption and human rights abuses, holding the powerful accountable for their actions. As editor-in-chief, Julian paid severely for these principles,and for the people's right to know.

As he returns to Australia, we thank all who stood by us, fought for us, and remained utterly committed in the fight for his freedom.

Julian's freedom is our freedom.

[More details to follow]

As soon as Apple announced its plans to inject generative AI into the iPhone, it was as good as official: The technology is now all but unavoidable. Large language models will soon lurk on most of the world’s smartphones, generating images and text in messaging and email apps. AI has already colonized web search, appearing in Google and Bing. OpenAI, the $80 billion start-up that has partnered with Apple and Microsoft, feels ubiquitous; the auto-generated products of its ChatGPTs and DALL-Es are everywhere. And for a growing number of consumers, that’s a problem.

Rarely has a technology risen—or been forced—into prominence amid such controversy and consumer anxiety. Certainly, some Americans are excited about AI, though a majority said in a recent survey, for instance, that they are concerned AI will increase unemployment; in another, three out of four said they believe it will be abused to interfere with the upcoming presidential election. And many AI products have failed to impress. The launch of Google’s “AI Overview” was a disaster; the search giant’s new bot cheerfully told users to add glue to pizza and that potentially poisonous mushrooms were safe to eat. Meanwhile, OpenAI has been mired in scandal, incensing former employees with a controversial nondisclosure agreement and allegedly ripping off one of the world’s most famous actors for a voice-assistant product. Thus far, much of the resistance to the spread of AI has come from watchdog groups, concerned citizens, and creators worried about their livelihood. Now a consumer backlash to the technology has begun to unfold as well—so much so that a market has sprung up to capitalize on it.

Obligatory "fuck 99.9999% of all AI use-cases, the people who make them, and the techbros that push them."