In this post, I am going to go over the wp core command and a few of its sub-commands that I find most useful when managing WordPress with WP-CLI*. I use these commands frequently, especially when keeping client sites up-to-date with the latest WordPress version.

**WP-CLI is a command line interface for WordPress (hence the name) and is incredibly powerful. It makes many tasks much simpler and easier. If you aren’t using it, you should be. You can check out the full documentation for the project at http://wp-cli.org/

wp core is the go-to command for managing your WordPress installation. There are a number of useful subcommands available. You can view the full documentation here.

wp core version

wp core version displays the current version of your WordPress installation. This is a handy way to find out what version you are on without having to log into the admin. You can also use the `--extra` flag to get additional information about TinyMCE, the current database revision, and the package language. Also, it's interesting to note that unlike most wp-cli commands, this command does not require a working database connection to function.

wp core check-update

wp core check-update will let you know if there is an update available for WordPress. You can also use the --major and --minor flags to display only updates for major and minor versions respectively. This command not only returns whether there is an update or not, but also the version number, the type of update (minor or major), and the package URL.

wp core update

wp core update will update your current WordPress install to the current available version by default. You can also add the —minor flag to restrict the update to only minor versions, or the --version=<version> flag to update to a specific version, instead of the latest.

wp core verify-checksums

Another really handy command is wp core verify-checksums which will download the md5 checksums for the current version of WordPress to compare against currently installed files. You can also specify the version whose checksums you want to verify using the --version=<version> flag. Also, like wp core version, this command does not require an activate database connection to function properly.