How to symlink your plugins
When building plugins, it’s a huge pain to drill into a site’s plugins folder and install a plugin, especially if it’s meant to live on multiple sites. The answer is to symlink a plugin folder! I’ll use my setup as an example.
- Download the repo (I put my repos at
Documents/Github) - Delete the existing folder from a site’s
pluginsfolder (optional)- This won’t work if, say, CNO Lite Vimeo Block already exists
- Open Terminal and run the following command:
ln -s "repo path" "plugins-folder-path"
Example: [CNHSA] CNO Content Federation Plugin
My plugin lives at Documents/Github/cnhsa-plugin-cno-content-federation and my site lives at Local Sites/cnhsa/app/public, so the full terminal command would be as follows:
ln -s "/Users/{$username}/Documents/Github/cnsa-plugin-cno-content-federation" "/Users/{$username}/Local Sites/app/public/wp-content/plugins"
# {$username} is a placeholder and should be replacedIf you look at your plugins folder in Finder, you should see a new “alias” or “shortcut” folder that, if you click into it, takes you back to wherever your git repo lives.
Note: Unfortunately, you can’t do this simply by right-clicking and selecting “Create Alias”.
Now, if you accidentally delete/overwrite your Local site or upload a built version of the plugin, you won’t mess up your git repo, you’ll just lose the link!