Title: WordPress support
Published: July 15, 2026
Last modified: July 16, 2026

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# WordPress support

## In this article

 * [SQLite](https://developer.wordpress.org/playground/developers/architecture/wordpress/?output_format=md#sqlite)
 * [WordPress in the browser](https://developer.wordpress.org/playground/developers/architecture/wordpress/?output_format=md#wordpress-in-the-browser)
 * [WordPress in Node.js](https://developer.wordpress.org/playground/developers/architecture/wordpress/?output_format=md#wordpress-in-node-js)

[ Back to top](https://developer.wordpress.org/playground/developers/architecture/wordpress/?output_format=md#wp--skip-link--target)

WordPress, as a PHP application, can run on PHP WebAssembly. However, there are 
a few caveats.

## 󠀁[SQLite](https://developer.wordpress.org/playground/developers/architecture/wordpress/?output_format=md#sqlite)󠁿

First, WordPress requires MySQL. However, there isn’t a WebAssembly version of MySQL
you could run in the browser. WordPress Playground, therefore, ships PHP with the
[native SQLite driver](https://www.php.net/manual/en/ref.pdo-sqlite.php) and leans
on SQLite.

But how can WordPress run on a different database?

Behind the scenes, the official [SQLite Database Integration](https://github.com/WordPress/sqlite-database-integration)
plugin intercepts all MySQL queries and rewrites them in SQLite dialect. The x.0
release ships [a new WordPress Playground-informed translation layer](https://github.com/WordPress/sqlite-database-integration/pull/9)
that allows WordPress on SQLite to pass 99% of the WordPress unit test suite.

## 󠀁[WordPress in the browser](https://developer.wordpress.org/playground/developers/architecture/wordpress/?output_format=md#wordpress-in-the-browser)󠁿

You can use any WordPress build in the browser. For convenience and to reduce the
data transfer size, WordPress Playground ships a few [minified WordPress releases](https://github.com/WordPress/wordpress-playground/tree/trunk/packages/playground/wordpress-builds)
that you can use in the browser.

## 󠀁[WordPress in Node.js](https://developer.wordpress.org/playground/developers/architecture/wordpress/?output_format=md#wordpress-in-node-js)󠁿

In Node.js, you’ll typically want to [mount WordPress](https://developer.wordpress.org/playground/developers/architecture/wasm-php-filesystem)
from a disk directory.

First published

July 15, 2026

Last updated

July 16, 2026

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[ Improve it on GitHub: WordPress support ](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/WordPress/wordpress-playground/trunk/packages/docs/site/docs/developers/23-architecture/15-wordpress.md)

Changelog

[ See list of changes: WordPress support ](https://developer.wordpress.org/playground/developers/architecture/wordpress/?output_format=md#)

[  Previous: Cross-process communication](https://developer.wordpress.org/playground/developers/architecture/browser-cross-process-communication/)

[  Next: How does it work?](https://developer.wordpress.org/playground/developers/architecture/wordpress-database/)