While citing developer tools, I find WP Engine stressing on Local WP in addition to other of its tools like Atlas headless CMS, Global Edge Security, Smart Plugin Manager.
I do not find any merit in developing a WordPress site offline. I have enough hosting space and I can make my site private, invisible to search engines easily while developing online.
My query is to seek opinion of other users/developers. Is local WordPress development meant only for large enterprises where privacy of paramount importance? And small entities, freelancers do it because they do not have currently hosting space?
It’s just faster to build locally, especially for themes. I don’t want to have to push/upload every time I move something 1px to the left
I do not wish to have to compile everything i develop, and then move it to my host. Even less while my tools rely on automatic reloading of local assets. It’s just not feasible to do it on a host due to the lack of speed.
I put it down to personal preference. We build on a testing server so that both of us can jump in knowing it’s the latest version. It also means clients/boss can always be sure they are looking at the latest version as well.
I use sublime with a ftp plugin that lets us work off of the remote server so files are uploaded in the background seamlessly (most of the time!).
The test server is the same environment the sites will live in which is handy & we can use online scanning tools & test it on mobiles in real time.
The only downside is it requires an Internet connection, but we only dev while WFH or in the office so not really an issue
You are obvious not developing anything else you would not ask this questions.
Yeah sure you can use just hosting to use page builder and move elements around, but to actualy doind some development you would need tools like Composer, npm, webpack, stuff like that that does not work directly on server…
Not to mention xDebug, or anything more advanced..
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So yeah, your path is valid if you only ever do premade themes like Avada, Divi or plugin like Elementor sites…
Building locally isn’t anything to do with people not having hosting space (whilst that may well be the case, it’s not the reason).
It’s simply faster & easier to develop locally whilst the site doesn’t need anyone else looking at it.
Why would I waste time constantly having to push changes up to a repo / pull to the server (or for those that don’t use GIT, constantly having to upload via FTP)? Sounds horrible.
Most developer’s workflows would be something like:
– Develop locally
– Push to dev/staging environments
– Push to live sites
I wanna chime in but others who use best practices have. Those who are arguing against local dev and/use of Git and CI/CD to any server must not understand the benefits therein.
You can look it up. Whether a single developer or working with a team, it just makes sense in the long run.
Who cares what people do? Develop locally or don’t, doesn’t really matter.