MVP was created

With many sites to test on we built a cli tool and automated our source controlled WordPress plugin updates using Github Actions on a schedule.

The results have left us wondering why we didn't think of this before now. Each update is a small task in itself, but around 10-30 plugins per site, and 10's of sites in source control the time really adds up.

Now less code oriented team members can review plugin updates to dev sites with our automated develop branch builds, and pull requests created for us!

Along the way i've also been able to add a new language into my tool belt. Spending most of time with PHP and Javascript. It was refreshing, yet familiar to try my hand at Golang.

We chose Golang simply because we knew if this was to be something we could distribute in future it needed to be a binary we could provide that doesn't need a runtime. Leaving our goto languages on the shelf for this one.

Ive learnt so much (and re-learnt in better ways) with Golang. Most notably trying to build a distribution system, then finding the wonderful godownloader and goreleaser combination which did everything we needed.

Now we know this is viable for us, we are confident this is useful for others in our situation (and maybe even others we haven't thought of yet).