{"id":155087,"date":"2016-05-07T14:00:01","date_gmt":"2016-05-07T14:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/premium.wpmudev.org\/blog\/?p=155087"},"modified":"2016-05-08T15:03:48","modified_gmt":"2016-05-08T15:03:48","slug":"terminal-command-line","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wpmudev.com\/blog\/terminal-command-line\/","title":{"rendered":"A Quick Guide to the Terminal and Command Line Prompt for WordPress"},"content":{"rendered":"

The terminal is one of those things that seems scary for the uninitiated. It’s all text based and spits out responses you don’t understand and feels like you’re hacking the system.<\/p>\n

The reality is, it is extremely simple and straightforward and can shave hours off each of your work days, I kid you not.<\/p>\n

In this article, I’ll introduce you to the terminal, show you how easy it is to use, and teach you the basics you need to know to work with great products that can automate everything from tidying your CSS to migrating your WordPress site with a single command.<\/p>\n

What is the Terminal \/ Command Line Prompt?<\/h3>\n

The terminal is an interface in which you can type and execute text-based commands. Command prompt is the name of the terminal in Windows, otherwise, it is pretty much the same.<\/p>\n

OK, so that was a little bit of a white lie.<\/p>\n

The operating principles of command prompt (let’s use cmd from now on) and the terminal are the same, but various commands might not be. The same thing happens with graphical user interfaces. In Windows, you would close windows in the top right corner, while in OSX you close programs in the top left. The principle is the same, just the element is simply found elsewhere.<\/p>\n

The goal of this article is to show you how commands work with some hands-on examples. Armed with this knowledge you’ll be able to use any command line tool!<\/p>\n

From now on, I’ll refer to both command prompt and the terminal as “terminal” unless I am highlighting specific differences between\u00a0the two.<\/p>\n

A Note for Windows Users<\/h4>\n

If you’re using Windows, I recommend Installing Cygwin<\/a>. Most tutorials that contain command line references work with an environment like Ubuntu or OSX where some command names are different. Cygwin adds many of these commands to Windows giving you a uniform experience.<\/p>\n

This tutorial will also mostly use Unix-style commands so following along will be easier with Cygwin. If you don’t want to install it and get a “command not found” error when trying an example simply search for the Windows alternative in Google.<\/p>\n

What Can the Terminal Do?<\/h3>\n

No doubt you are used to basic operations like creating a folder by right-clicking and selecting “New Folder,” then typing a\u00a0name.<\/p>\n

In the terminal, you would issue the following command:\u00a0mkdir foldername<\/code>. And that’s it.<\/p>\n

This is a lot faster and many commands that do the same things as your GUI can take a bunch of parameters for more flexibility, more on that later.<\/p>\n

Your operating system already a huge list of commands you can use for everything from creating files to optimizing images. New commands can be installed that allow you to do all sorts of cool things.<\/p>\n

Here are just some things I do every day:<\/p>\n