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SSH and WP-CLI on a WordPress site

Every WordPress site comes with real SSH — to live and to its staging copy. You land in the site's files as the user WordPress runs as, with WP-CLI ready, and everything that rides on SSH works: scp, rsync, SFTP, VS Code and Cursor Remote-SSH, and a tunnel to your database.

You log in as www-data — the same user WordPress runs as — so files you create keep the ownership WordPress expects, and the shell can do exactly what your site's own code can: you get your site, not the server, which is still ours to manage, heal and patch. Keys belong to people, and access follows your team: anyone who can open the site in the panel can connect with their own key, and a developer limited to other sites can't. It's on every plan.

1. 1
   Add your public key

   Go to Account → SSH keys and paste your public key — the one-line contents of ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub. Ed25519, ECDSA and RSA keys of 2048 bits or more work. One key covers every site and app you have access to. Never paste the private key — the panel refuses it.
2. 2
   Copy the config block

   Open the site and go to its SSH & SFTP tab. Add the block it shows to ~/.ssh/config. If the site has a staging copy, the block includes it as a second alias ending in -staging.
3. 3
   Connect

   Run ssh followed by the alias. You land in /var/www/html — the site's files — with WP-CLI on the path.
4. 4
   Check the host key once

   On the first connection your SSH client shows the server's fingerprint and asks whether to trust it. The tab shows the same fingerprint — compare the two before you answer yes.

Host my-site
  HostName my-site.p.belov.cloud
  Port 2222
  User a1b2c3d4e5f6

Host my-site-staging
  HostName my-site.p.belov.cloud
  Port 2222
  User f6e5d4c3b2a1

ssh my-site                                  # a shell in the site's files
ssh my-site wp plugin list                   # WP-CLI, ready to go
ssh my-site wp cache flush                   # …or any wp command
ssh my-site 'wp search-replace old.example new.example --dry-run'
rsync -av ./my-theme/ my-site:wp-content/themes/my-theme/
sftp my-site                                 # or any SFTP client, with your key

Your database is a command away: wp db cli opens a MySQL shell right on the server. To use TablePlus or DBeaver instead, open a tunnel and connect to localhost:3306 with the user and password WP-CLI prints. The tunnel starts inside your site's container, so it reaches exactly what WordPress can — nothing more.

ssh -t my-site wp db cli                     # a MySQL shell
ssh -N -L 3306:belov-db:3306 my-site         # TablePlus / DBeaver → localhost:3306
ssh my-site wp config get DB_USER            # the credentials
ssh my-site wp config get DB_PASSWORD

VS Code and Cursor connect the same way: Remote-SSH → Connect to Host → pick the alias, and the editor opens the site's files like a local folder, terminal included.

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