Back to: WordPress Local Development Basics
Transcript
WordPress is a very popular choice for building a website for a number of reasons. But a big one is how EASY it is to host and run a WordPress site. The overall requirements to get a WordPress site running on a server somewhere are pretty low.
WordPress is typically run on a remote server that lives in a datacenter or THE CLOUD. A remote server is just another computer that is connected to the internet. So really any computer that has the appropriate software installed can run WordPress. That means that your local computer is JUST as capable of running a WordPress site as a remote server.
When you’re doing WordPress development and making code changes, being able to have the code you’re changing on your own computer makes things much faster and simpler, ESPECIALLY if you’re working on an existing site. If the site is getting traffic and people are using it, you wouldn’t want to break it or cause the site to stop working while you’re making changes. Having a local copy of the site to work on allows you more FREEDOM to do your work without negatively affecting any site visitors or users.
While you’re learning, you can see a local WordPress install to learn and practice WordPress development for FREE and forgo the costs of hosting until you’re ready.
When I’m working locally, I can easily tweak files for testing (including those of PLUGINS or WordPress core itself) which can help when debugging or learning more about some code. WordPress also has a great terminal command suite called WP CLI that lets you interact with your WordPress site using the terminal. Even if you don’t consider yourself a TERMINAL PERSON, you may find yourself enjoying the speed and simplicity of those commands.
In the following videos, I’ll show you a few different ways you can set up a local WordPress environment and give you some information to decide which approach is right for you. Some choices may vary depending on your operating system and other factors. I’m going to focus on telling you what you need to know to get going and sharing resources to more in depth material where appropriate.