VIP MU plugins

The VIP Platform’s Must Use (“MU”) plugins are deployed to all VIP Platform WordPress applications. The VIP MU plugins codebase provides WordPress applications with integration to the VIP Platform infrastructure (e.g. cache management) as well as various helper functions and commonly used performance enhancements.

• The branch of VIP MU plugins that deploys to an environment—production branch or staging branch—can be configured in the Software Management panel of the VIP Dashboard.
• The release windows for VIP MU plugins (both production and staging branches) is currently Tuesdays between 08:00 and 22:00 UTC (09:00 and 23:00 UTC when Daylight Saving Time is in effect in North America).

VIP MU plugins production branch

Changelog for the production branch of VIP MU plugins.

VIP MU plugins is open sourced and its development can be followed from the VIP MU plugins GitHub repository.

VIP MU plugins staging branch

Changelog for the staging branch of VIP MU plugins.

By default, VIP deploys the staging branch of VIP’s MU plugins to one non-production environment for all applications. This allows customers to test changes ahead of their release to production environments. This also provides time for the VIP Team to observe errors and test for bugs across a wider variety of applications.

Changes made and deployed to the VIP MU plugins Staging branch are labeled [Status] Deployed to staging and visible in this filtered VIP MU plugins pull request view. 

Local development

Local development environments must include a copy of VIP MU plugins; without it, customizations, core behaviors, and functionality tested locally can often behave differently in a VIP Platform environment. The local copy of VIP MU plugins should be regularly kept up to date.

• The VIP Local Development Environment can automatically load and track the staging branch of VIP MU plugins by selecting demo in the environment creation process.
• A git clone of the vip-go-mu-plugins repository includes submodules that must be initialized with git submodule update --init in order to work as expected.
• It is recommended to create a local copy of VIP MU plugins with a git clone of the vip-go-mu-plugins-built repository. This is a “built” version of VIP MU plugins and requires no extra steps.