WordPress + Git = ♡
VersionPress is a free and open source version control plugin for WordPress built on Git. You can:
Simply update your sites with confidence.
See basic walkthrough and staging in action
This could be the next big thing
Possibly the best thing about WordPress is how simple it makes most things. Just a couple of clicks and there you have new plugin installed, a shiny theme activated, that annoying user deleted, and so on. People love this, and we do too.
There's a flip side to it, however. Most actions are irreversible and done straight on the live site, which is dangerous. What if a plugin had a bug? What if you your client did something stupid? These things happen and are unpleasant to deal with.
In simple terms:
VersionPress tracks all the actions in a WordPress site and simply offers an undo button for them. For example, if a plugin update failed, the undo button reverts its files and any database changes the plugin might have made.
Even better, VersionPress provides painless staging. This means that you can easily create a safe testing environment for your changes and only merge them back when they are ready. Merge is the key word here – VersionPress handles situations where your live site had new content in the meantime seamlessly.
In technical terms:
VersionPress brings the power of Git to WordPress. We version-control both files and the database, in a clever way that is friendly to diffing & merging.
The point is that you can manage your WordPress site as any other software project. Push and pull from GitHub, create pull requests for new content changes, review them in a team, merge into production later, etc. It all works very seamlessly, in a way that WordPress developers could hardly imagine before. VersionPress is all about workflows.
New commit is created for every change, be it a new post, plugin update, theme customization or anything.
Both files and the database are tracked.
Returning back to a previous state is trivial and you don't even need to know Git.
You can also undo just specific changes from the site's history.
One of the nicest features: you can selectively undo a change without affecting the newer updates. For instance, you can return to a previous theme while maintaining newer content.
Staging is crucial for reliable updates but traditionally very hard when it comes to merges. VersionPress takes the pain out of it, similarly to how Git helps with files.
Database merges for real!
VersionPress is extremely space-efficient. A site with hundreds of updates will still usually take just a few MB.
The backup is continuous – no need to worry about backup periods, period.
No matter how you manage your site – admin screens, WP-CLI or manual commits – VersionPress supports that.
Any Git client can be used to work with VersionPress' repository.
Sounds trivial but is actually a big achievement and tribute to WordPress' extensibility. VersionPress is one of the most complex plugins out there.
You can install and forget VersionPress, it will do its work silently behind the scenes. It will be there when you need it.
Git is one of the best version control systems out there and we're proud to bring its power to WordPress.
Note: VersionPress is Early Access – we're still developing it and there are known limitations. Learn more.
For hosting, we recommend Kickassd (supports staging) or FastComet.
It provides basic content revisions but VersionPress goes far beyond that. It versions options, themes, plugins, users, uploads, comments, terms, simply everything. Those two things are really not comparable and can actually live happily side by side with each other.
Yes, standard Git workflows just work. See e.g. this blog post.
Star the repo on GitHub, follow us on Twitter or subscribe to our blog. We also have a Facebook page if you prefer that.
We use GitHub for almost everything:
If you want to discuss things privately (sponsorships, partnerships etc.):
