Working with WordPress on a daily basis at Combell.com (a Team.Blue company) means I get to see, optimize and debug a ton of WordPress sites each single day. This also means I sometimes need things to be dealt with quickly. And that’s where the command-line comes in…

So why won’t you use WP-CLI?

Of course I use WP-CLI too. It’s a great addition to the toolkit of any user/developer/hoster. But there are (quite often) times when WP-CLI is just not an option or too slow. And that’s no complaint or insult towards WP-CLI by the way. Let me explain by some examples:

  • When WordPress core, a certain plugin or a theme causes a fatal error, WP-CLI is rendered useless.
  • I’ve seen cases where a very poorly optimized query caused such a slowdown on WordPress that any wp-cli command, for example a wp user list, took more than 5 minutes to complete. This was solely caused by a plugin, not by WP-CLI, but it did impact WP-CLI.
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