VelvetPress/DocsDashboard →

Quick Start

Get a release flowing from git push to a WordPress admin "Update now" button in under fifteen minutes. This page is the skim — each step links to the full guide.

What is VelvetPress?

Vercel-style update distribution for WordPress plugins and themes. You ship a release by pushing to GitHub. Sites running your plugin or theme see the update in wp-admin and click to install — no zip uploads, no re-deploys.

What you need before you start

  • A GitHub account.
  • A WordPress site you control (local is fine).
  • A plugin or theme repo on GitHub. If you don't have one yet, fork the VP Starter Theme — it's a minimal block theme already shaped for this loop.

Step 1: Fork the starter theme

The fastest way to see the whole pipeline end to end is to fork the starter theme and follow it through. Plugin developers can substitute their own repo at this step — the rest of the flow is identical.

Fork vp-starter-theme into your own GitHub account.

→ Full developer onboarding guide

Step 2: Create a VelvetPress account and connect GitHub

Open velvetpress.dev and click Sign In (or Get Started Free) — both open the same Clerk modal, which doubles as sign-up. After signing in, install the VelvetPress GitHub App on the personal account or organization that owns the repo you just forked, then pick that repo from the Themes (or Plugins) tab to register it as a new product. You can connect more accounts or organizations later from the dashboard's Connections tab.

→ Full developer onboarding guide

Step 3: Install the client plugin on your WordPress site

From the dashboard's Sites tab, click Add site and enter a name and domain. You get back a per-site API key. In the same tab's header, Client plugin downloads the velvetpress.zip you upload to the site.

Hand both the API key and the zip to the site admin. In wp-admin:

  1. Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin — upload the zip and activate it.
  2. Settings → VelvetPress — paste the API key and save.

The site is now registered and polling for updates.

→ Installing on a customer WordPress site

Step 4: Push a change, watch it land

Bump the version header in your repo — style.css for themes, the main plugin file for plugins — and push:

git commit -am "bump version"
git push

Back in wp-admin, go to Dashboard → Updates (or Themes / Plugins) and click Check Again. The new version appears. Click Update Now.

That's the loop. Every push from here on works the same way.

→ Publishing a plugin or theme

What's next