Local by Flywheel

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I’ve switched all my local WordPress development over to Local by Flywheel. I heard about it from y’all when we did a poll not to long ago about local WordPress development. Bottom line: it’s really good. It does everything you want it to, well, with zero hassle, and nothing more.

Running Multiple WordPress Installs (PHP, MySQL, Web Server)

That’s kind of the whole point. Local by Flywheel spins up a local site for you with all the dependencies that WordPress needs. Just by picking a few options and giving the site a name, you’ve spun up a new WordPress install in a few seconds.

And it’s ready to go!

Nice UI

Surely what Local by Flywheel is doing under the hood is quite complicated, but the UI for the app isn’t at all. I’m a big fan of apps like this. The super clean UI makes everything feel so easy and simple, despite it actually being complex and powerful. Just the information and controls you need!

HTTPS (SSL)

The web is moving more and more toward all-HTTPS, which is fantastic. With all the setup options Local by Flywheel offers, you can get your production and development versions of your site pretty close. We should be taking that another step further and be working locally over HTTPS, if our production sites are.

Local by Flywheel doesn’t just make it easy, it automatically sets up HTTPS for you! And of course, it just works. You probably want to trust that local certificate though to make it even smoother.

But wait! Don’t follow my awkward and slightly complex instructions. There is a one-click button right in Local by Flywheel to trust the certificate.

Combining with CodeKit

For all my simple mostly-solo projects, I’ve long been a fan of having CodeKit watch the project, so I preprocess all my CSS and JavaScript, optimize my images, and all that good task runner stuff. That’s easy, just point the CodeKit browser refreshing URL at the Local by Flywheel URL.

Migrating

Another one-click button I love in Local by Flywheel is the one that jumps you right to Sequel Pro.

This was mighty handy for me as I was migrating from a couple of different setups. For a zillion years I used MAMP, and configured Sequel Pro to be my database manager. Then for a bit, I switched over to Docker to manage my local WordPress stuff, which was fun and interesting but was ultimately wasn’t as easy as I wanted it to be. I also used Sequel Pro when I was in that phase.

So I was able to really quickly export and import the databases where I needed them!

It’s also worth mentioning that if you don’t have an existing local setup you’re migrating from, but do have a production site, I highly recommend WP DB Migrate Pro for yanking down that production database in an extremely painless fashion.

Live Link

As if that wasn’t enough, they tossed in one more really cool little feature. One click on the “Live Link” feature, and it fires up an ngrok URL for you. That’s a live-on-the-internet URL you can use to share your localhost. Send it to a client! Debug a mobile issue! Very cool.


TLDR: I’m a fan of Local by Flywheel!