Updating WP_ENVIRONMENT_TYPE with the WP CLI

Last Updated: December 4, 2025 @ 9:08am

This assumes you have ssh access configured for your machine. Click here if you need to get it set up.

When a new environment is spun up with WP Engine, WP Engine doesn’t set up the WP_ENVIRONMENT_TYPE constant in wp-config. Here’s a shell script to use with the command line and wp-cli to make it super easy to do.

Copy Code

ENV="$1"
TYPE="$2"

# ---- VALIDATION ----
if [ -z "$ENV" ] || [ -z "$TYPE" ]; then
  echo "Usage: $0 <environment> <type>"
  echo "Example: $0 staging development"
  exit 1
fi

echo "---------------------------------------------"
echo " 🔐  Connecting to environment: $ENV"
echo "---------------------------------------------"

# ---- EXECUTE REMOTE COMMANDS ----
ssh "${ENV}@${ENV}.ssh.wpengine.net" bash <<EOF

echo "📁 Changing directory to: sites/${ENV}"
cd sites/${ENV} || { echo "❌ ERROR: Directory sites/${ENV} not found."; exit 1; }

echo "⚙️ Running WP-CLI to update environment type..."
wp config set WP_ENVIRONMENT_TYPE ${TYPE} \
    --type=constant \
    --anchor="# WP Engine Settings" \
    --placement=before \

WP_EXIT_CODE=\$?

if [ \$WP_EXIT_CODE -eq 0 ]; then
    echo "✅ Successfully set WP_ENVIRONMENT_TYPE to '${TYPE}'"
else
    echo "❌ WP-CLI failed with exit code \$WP_EXIT_CODE"
    exit \$WP_EXIT_CODE
fi

EOF

REMOTE_EXIT=$?

echo "---------------------------------------------"
if [ $REMOTE_EXIT -eq 0 ]; then
  echo "🎉 Done! Remote update completed successfully."
else
  echo "❌ Something went wrong (exit code $REMOTE_EXIT)"
fi
echo "---------------------------------------------"

Here’s what to do:

Create a file like set-env.sh with your terminal touch set-env.sh
Open the file, paste the above into it and save it.
Run ./{filename}.sh {wp_env_name} {staging|development}
- Example: ./set-env.sh cnodev development
Repeat step 3 until you’re done!

Updating WP_ENVIRONMENT_TYPE with the WP CLI

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