Documentation · Developer Documentation

Local Development Setup

This page describes the public-safe shape of a local development environment for the plugin. The exact constants, file paths, internal helper scripts and managed-service configuration used by AD Promotion's own development setup are not published here.

When to use this document

Use this document when you:

  • Are contributing code, templates or documentation to the plugin from a fork.
  • Need to reproduce a bug locally before reporting or fixing it.
  • Want to evaluate the plugin's behaviour against a controlled WordPress installation.

End users installing the plugin on a production site should follow the user handbook installation guide instead.

High-level requirements

  • Git for cloning your fork of the repository.
  • PHP at the minimum version declared in the plugin header.
  • Composer for installing development dependencies (test framework only; the plugin has no runtime Composer dependencies).
  • A local WordPress installation at the minimum WordPress version declared in the plugin header. Any standard local-development tool works (Local, DDEV, Lando, wp-env, Docker, MAMP, native LAMP/LEMP, etc.).

Typical workflow

  1. Clone your fork of the repository.
  2. Place (or symlink) the plugin folder inside wp-content/plugins/ of a local WordPress installation that matches the plugin's documented minimum versions.
  3. Activate the plugin from wp-admin.
  4. Install development dependencies with Composer if you intend to run the project's test suite.
  5. Run the test suite from the project root following the Testing Guide.
  6. Make your changes following the Coding Standards and the Contribution Guidelines.

Operating notes

  • Never commit secrets. Configure any API credentials, automation tokens or webhook secrets through the plugin's admin UI on your local site, not through committed files. Do not place credentials in wp-config.php snippets that are tracked by source control.
  • Managed services. Some plugin features rely on AD Promotion-managed services that are provisioned for customer sites. For local development of those features, use your own personal test credentials configured through the admin UI; AD Promotion's managed configuration is not distributed.
  • Verbose diagnostics. When you need more diagnostic detail locally, enable verbose logging from the plugin's admin UI rather than depending on internal log paths.

Public documentation notice. This page provides a high-level integration overview only. Internal implementation details, private APIs, storage internals and security-sensitive release infrastructure are maintained separately and are not part of the public documentation.