New Chrome Browser Extension Enables One-Click Plugin and Theme Testing with WordPress Playground – WP Tavern
WordPress Playground, an experimental venture that makes use of WebAssembly (WASM) to run WordPress in the browser, makes it doable for customers to shortly take a look at plugins and themes with out having to arrange a neighborhood improvement surroundings.
Ordinarily, testing a plugin or theme with Playground requires visiting playground.wordpress.net, which is able to immediately create an actual WordPress occasion with admin entry with out having to put in PHP, MySQL, or Apache. It runs contained in the browser utilizing a SQLite database. Including a plugin or theme to the occasion is as straightforward as appending the slug to the URL when creating the take a look at website:
https://playground.wordpress.net/?plugin=gutenberg
https://playground.wordpress.net/?theme=lemmony-agency
A brand new Chrome browser extension, created by LUBUS, a improvement company, makes this even simpler by including a “Playground” button to theme and plugin pages on WordPress.org. Customers can fireplace up a sandbox occasion to check drive a theme or plugin in only one click on.
I examined the extension and it really works as marketed. It’s a neat little shortcut for launching a Playground occasion with out having to recollect the URL or get the plugin/theme’s slug to append to it. The video beneath reveals a website created with a specific plugin put in in below 20 seconds.
“We’ve got been utilizing Playground internally quite a bit for testing out plugins, and fast demos for inside or consumer conferences,” LUBUS founder Ajit Bohra mentioned. “We regularly discover a plugin or theme which we wish to take a look at drive. It includes copying the slug of the theme or plugin and utilizing them within the URL. To make this fast we considered constructing and fast browser extension so as to add a button on wordpress.org to shortly launch a plugin or theme within the Playground.”
Bohra posted his course of of making the extension in a thread on X. He used the Plasmo framework, which presents a devoted runtime for constructing browser extensions, taking the venture from concept to inbuilt roughly half-hour.
Bohra mentioned the browser extension is at the moment a proof of idea that he wish to additional lengthen with extra settings primarily based on suggestions from customers. He additionally hopes to collaborate with the Meta staff sooner or later to see one thing like this added to the plugin and theme pages on WordPress.org in order that customers don’t need to depend on a browser extension.
The Chrome extension known as “Open in WordPress Playground” and is obtainable to the general public without cost on the Chrome Internet Retailer. The code is open source on GitHub and open for contribution.
