The bitnami installer worked well enough. Step 1: Back up local XAMPP data. I switched from MAMP to Laravel Valet directly and I am so glad I did it. Laravel Valet is such a neat command line software to use in the Mac environment. Notice how wonderfully short it is. It may be a little basic for someone who needs to develop and test themes or plugins in varied deployment scenarios. We have another complete article covering Laravel Valet, VVV ( Vagrant), Chassis, etc. Powerful yet simple, everyone from students to global corporations use it to build beautiful, functional websites. Thanks for the reminder! It will automatically set up SSL for your sites, open source MailHog integration to catch outbound emails the list goes on. The local by fly wheel site looks new and fresh, you know, flat design and all of that. Your content isnt performing as well Well, Toto, its official: were not in Kansas anymore. The best dev environment for wordpress plugins and themes by far IMO. When it finished its thing, I had a new WordPress install at 127.0.0.1 which isnt exactly what I wanted. It has a GUI for installing WordPress as well as lots of other software. All good. Definitely not renewing the DesktopServer subscription this year, though if 4.0 ever comes out, Ill certainly kick the tires on the free version. When Local came around I jumped and I have been very happy. Its true that most of these things have workarounds, but the idea is to be efficient with time and thats our focus. Maybe its because Im used to a more app-based approach but it took me a bit to realize that most of XAMPPs interface exists as a web app on localhost. Ive recently started using Laragon for Windows. With MAMP (free), this DIY requirement just involves unzipping the latest release of WordPress in MAMPs default webroot at /Applications/MAMP/htdocs/, creating a database. jsphpajax I have used Xampp but find the method to add Virtual servers (more than one web site) "interesting" it sometimes works. I always thought that was overkill for WordPress dev. If you know of any advantages to installing a local version of WP via XAMPP over Bitnami, please chime in and straighten me out. To everyone here. Sometimes useful, so might as well leave the box checked. You can find me on twitter (@marcbenzak) or on our contact page. Hey! I'd suggest you download and install xampp. Installing XAMPP seems easy enough: just download the correct installer from their website and run it. But with so many approaches, wouldnt be nice to give Docker a try? . Thanks for the rundown, Id gone from WAMP, to XAMPP, to MAMP, to VirtualBox, to Vagrant/VB, to Docker, and now Homebrew services (nginx, mariadb, php) on my mac has been pretty turnkey for getting all these things running. I was reading your article because I have a problem with MAMP Pro. This is very timely for me as Im finally upgrading from MacOS Yosemite (10.10) to Sierra (10.12). Otherwise, I think 4/4.5 is justified. It sits there and does the work of installing, which takes a few minutes. The other tab is Server Events. Flywheel was also recently acquired by WP Engine, so Local is now a WP Engine product. They provide the same setup as a VM, Docker container or even a direct install to a cloud provider. The free All-in-One WP Migration does a stellar job. The WordPress installer seems to work well and intuitively enough. Local is the fastest and most intuitive and well designed application among all. So kept reading and among the comments, I focused on Laravel Valet and Local by flywheel. I only paid for Pressmatic about 3 months before Flywheel bought it! WAMP enables switching between versions of PHP, apache, mysql just by a single click (windows services will restart automatically via console script). WordPress packaged by Bitnami WordPress is the world's most popular blogging and content management platform. No longer a sore point for them, and their customer support have proven to be more than competent, offering remote maintenance (by their engineers) of my local site when I had an issue. You need to enable "dev mode", which will disable the aggressive caching. Uncheck this unless you want to learn about cloud hosting through Bitnami. Sometimes useful, so might as well leave the box checked. It's easier than you think to install a local version of WordPress on your laptop. Im definitely going to give Local a try. Just saying. Theres an option to uncheck phpMyAdmin if you dont want access to the database. Wow, Im not in the loop with DS, just know it as one of the more widely-used solutions for local development on Mac but disappointing to hear that theyve dropped the ball. While Local and DesktopServer allow you to customize domain names for local sites, XAMPP and MAMP (unless youre using Pro) dont. Sign up for my newsletter and get your free copy. XAMPP starts off with a silly pronunciation (we can all agree, it should be pronounced zamp) and continues the trend with a clunky install process, unintuitive interface, and lack of features. Nice to see mention of alternatives to Vagrant. Bitnami tutorials simply dont seem to exist in droves, probably because theyre not very necessary. Otherwise, Id have been lost at sea. This helps to avoid issues when uploading files to the stack. Following the same suite as XAMPP, DesktopServer doesnt allow you to switch between different PHP versions which makes it less interesting for me. Im in total agreement with Guy about Desktop Server. Full disclosure: MAMP Pro is my daily driver. (Windows, Mac, Linux, etc.) 3- copy the wordpress files from the installation. Ive tried them all and Im currently enjoying LbFW (having paid $99 for pressmatic, still waiting for LbFW pro for free!) Is there anything else youd like to know more about when it comes to setting up your local development environment? I first tried installing XAMPP under a new user on my Mac laptop. I love the ease of use of Local, but find it occasionally slow. It's a great resource for anyone who wants to get detailed info on branding, target audience, and goals from their new customers. Desktop Server could at least complete a migration from remote to local, but it still regularly messes up my URLs. and many more. Heres a taste of how easy it was for me to install it on my laptop. Been trying to migrate some of them to run in Docker containers, so theres less stuff needing to be run locally. XAMPP also has SSL feature while WAMP doesnt. Apache Friends and Bitnami have been collaborating in order to provide easy-to-install modules, such as Wordpress, Drupal and many other PHP project. Ive been using Laragon for the past year on Windows and have been very impressed with it. For awhile, All-In-One worked great for this, but as our site has become more complex, it has failed. Thank you Jeff! You can also easily switch between different versions of PHP, a number of PHP versions are included in the application but you can always download additional versions through their built-in installer. It lets you customize username, password, database user/password etc during the process. Advantages of XAMPP: It is cross-platform software It possesses many other essential modules such as phpMyAdmin, OpenSSL, MediaWiki, WordPress, Joomla and more. Step 3: Add the WordPress files. Company . I kept getting errors due to unknown causes in config.php while using MAMP. Ive used all of these for years, and like you favored MAMP Pro, but warming to Local, because woah have you seen ALL those tech specs on that download page , On Windows, Laragon is pretty amazing. Recently installed Valet to give it a try (as local doesnt yet work with High Sierra which I rushed into installing on a machine). No brainer. To you is odd to say Shamp, to me is odd to say zamp, because Shamp is the natural sound of XAmp in Portuguese. By way of an update, and a less expensive solution than either of those, Ive found that Bitnami and Updraft are a great combo to get our site cloned and running locally. Its involved and it requires many decisions on your part. Finding PHP installation path did confuse me, but if you open up Site shell and enter where php, it should point you to the right path. Perhaps you hit the Import limit of All-in-One free version once your site went beyond 512 MB? Certainly none of the options are perfect. Within about 15 minutes, I had Error: /usr/local/opt/php71 is not a valid keg Error: /usr/local/opt/php70 is not a valid keg (( delete some obscure stuff )) Error: The brew link step did not complete successfully The formula built, but is not symlinked into /usr/local Could not symlink . It also seems to work great on both Mac and PC, with one exception, and its a big one for Windows developers: Local is incompatible with Windows 10 HyperV and it fails gracelessly. Youll need to install XAMPP-VM for Mac to be able to install XAMPP addons separately. 17 related questions found. Anyway, I hope that helps clear a few things up and should anyone have any questions, feel free to contact me directly! You have to know to choose Apache, phpmyadmin, mySQL etc, which means installation is no walk in the park. MAMP Pro also provides Python, Perl, and Ruby via the command line. Getting started Understand the default PHP configuration Obtain MySQL credentials Understand the default port configuration You can browse Bitnami modules for XAMPP here . Ive used XAMP, WAMP, Local, VVV, Vagrant, and even Bitnami standalone servers, and Docker, but Laragon stands out for minimalism, simplicity, and solid automatic features. Hi, thanks for this, have you experienced any issues with local and db migrate pro? XAMPP, which you may be surprised to find out is pronounced Shamp, is probably the oldest local development environment around and possibly the most complex. That said, my Windows machine with WSL makes setting up a LAMP stack super easy. After my failed attempt, I created a MacOS virtual machine so that I could provide XAMPP with the completely blank slate that it needed. Its great when it works, but Ive encountered problems with in on more than one occassion. Setting up a new site in Local is quite quick and can be made even quicker by setting up a blueprint which essentially copies all files, databases, config files, and Local settings. If you've ever manually installed WordPress, the rest of the process should feel pretty familiar. If youre seeing any issues, please reach us via support. So many choices! XAMPP is a little challenging to get started with (and I admittedly have never used it on a Mac) but once youre comfortable with it I find its extremely flexible. I tried it a year ago but it was still too immature, now apparently they are releasing a 3.0 version (called Lando) so maybe its time to give it another try. Uncheck this unless you want to learn about cloud hosting through Bitnami. Have you tried running WP using Parallels Desktop VM? We always tell people that each product has its advantage and our goal is simply to help you develop the best workflow that works FOR YOU! Good info. Sequel Pro for MySQL gui, and over the years Ive gotten used to editing nginx/apache server configs. Not quite sure what all DesktopServer does behind the scenes but Local usually needs to update /etc/hosts file for the custom domains to work. Believe Local by Flywheel uses Docker, so started reading about that and Vagrant and Valet. If you do, youll get port conflicts as well as some MySQL errors. MAMP (which comes with no pronunciation guide and so Im assuming its pronounced potato) is the second most tenured local server that I know of. I used to setup an entire VM environment for network sites and subdomains, and Local just handles it really well. Really anything Apache/MySQL/PHP runs in here. Comparatively, it feels faster than any application Ive reviewed in this article. The issue Ive had with DesktopServer and Local are that they require admin rights to run and in a corporate environment where designers and developers dont usually have the permanent admin rights, this is a showstopper. After fighting with Xampp, Mamp (for Windows!) You should then be able to visit that local wordpress files by typing http://localhost into your browser. Once youve chosen your local development environment tool, see our advice on the best setup for your local WordPress development environment. The main reason to upgrade seems to be that the free version will only let you create three sites, while the $100/yr premium version lifts this limitation. We have a much better option now . What if you want to local dev the same site on your desktop and laptop? The best dev environment available for Windows today is Ubuntu on Windows, free for Win 10 by Microsoft. If youve been using HyperV then youre probably well aware of incompatibilities with other virtualization techniques, but because Local abstracts all of the virtualization away, you might not know how the environment is working and so its not clear thats why its failing. Otherwise, Id have been lost at sea. Auto installer for the stack, WordPress, Joomla, Magento, and others. Switch between php versions on the fly. Its a great tool to keep your projects separate on different virtual machines, it handles dev/staging/production environments and after small configuration it is fully automatized. Its a Docker environment working on Mac, Linux & Windows. Our library provides trusted virtual machines for every major development stack and open source server application, ready to run in your infrastructure. Sure git can sync /wp-content easily enough, but what about the db? I stand corrected. AIO does it in a couple of clicks. (more errors of this kind) (( change owner of /usr/local/opt )) Error: Directory not empty /usr/local/opt/php70 composer global require weprovide/valet-plus dyld: Library not loaded: /usr/local/opt/openssl/lib/libcrypto.1.0.0.dylib Referenced from: /usr/local/bin/php Reason: image not found Abort trap: 6 at which point I gave up and started deleting all the Homebrew stuff, again. Local also comes with WP-CLI installed by default, but you cant just open up your sites folder and start running WP-CLI commands. I use it all the time in my line of work. Anyone else have this issue or have a best setup. Its easier than you think to install a local version of WordPress on your laptop. But it does so much for you for free that I imagine itd be a hard sell if the free version wasnt limited by the number of sites you can install. From there, it offers links to download bitnami modules for WordPress and other applications. Thanks for the comparison, though. https://medium.com/@timneutkens/introducing-valet-blazing-fast-php-development-environment-46be91604bb2 https://sridhar.blog/tag/valet/. BitNami Cloud Hosting lets you instantly run every BitNami package you already know and love and have it automatically configured, backed up and monitored. At least it comes with an uninstaller. Activate the "All-In-One WP Migration" plugin. Its disrespectful to the OS movement and WP community, and detrimental to the long-term. This works great and its super quick. I have installed the XAMPP folder in Applications. Nice review but I cannot install local by flywheel on my laptop. Ive had fits trying to get Local installed on a Windows 10 machine. The major differences between MAMP, XAMPP, DesktopServer, and Local is the ability to manage multiple sites and ease of use. For MacOS, youll need to install WordPress directly in XAMPPs site directory as recently OS X native modules have been deprecated. The answer to this is the classic Weve got some bad news. Im not a WP dev, but our organization, The Milk Mob, has WP site which is central to our operations. Your website looks old though, makes me wonder if DS has been abandoned. Notice how wonderfully short it is. Ive tried Local by Flywheel and I loved it. XAMPP stands for X-platform Apache MariaDB, PHP and Perl Its definitely the only local server that still touts Perl support as a major feature, so if you like to keep it TMTOWTDI, then this is definitely the one for you. Their features and supported versions of software are at least worth to look at. The respective trademarks mentioned in the offerings are owned by the respective companies, and use of them does not imply any affiliation or endorsement. "youre either a masochist or some sort of Linux user". please do not use Local. It sits there and does the work of installing, which takes a few minutes. Hey Daren! There are quite a few different applications and tools that fit this bill, but for now well be comparing the four GUI-based tools that seem to me to be the largest players in this space: XAMPP, MAMP (Pro), DesktopServer, and Local. Thanks for the Valet Plus pointer. You can run the bleeding edge versions of PHP, build it from source, install PECL extensions, run native Linux tools and Bash commands via shell functions in PHP and so on. Windows is and always will be poorly supported for PHP development, because hardly anyone deploys PHP projects to Windows servers. Having been around for a long time, I like to mettle, so periodically I clone the site and run it locally using ServerPress to control the server. Its actually essential Sign up to get your free copy of my New Customer Questionnaire. https://medium.com/@petehegman/my-wordpress-dev-setup-using-laravel-tools-to-improve-your-wordpress-development-f1b08de02d3d. Thanks again for the great article! Local also allows developers to build their own addons to modify or extend Locals functionalities. Both the Bitnami WordPress installer and XAMPP come bundled with these three software to make it easy to get a WordPress site running on your local computer. Its been around for longer than most web developers and offers a workable solution. Just by adding a new folder to the web root, the app will detect it and automatically set up your local hosts file domain for it. Ram is a PHP developer from India. ;;; ; ; (3/5 semicolons) cPanel, MongoDB, MySQL, SQLite, phpMyAdmin, Perl, Python etc. For MacOS, you'll need to install WordPress directly in XAMPP's site directory as recently OS X native modules have been deprecated. In my opinion a much better way than the above mentioned options. For all the freelance writers out there who use WordPress to make a living, there are very few who relish developing the kind of knowledge it takes to do all this. Local does a great job isolating its software, and you can even use Local alongside something like MAMP or XAMPP. I also recommend it to anyone who is just beginning with WordPress (users or developers). SHAMPs XAMPPs interface, at least on MacOS, is less than intuitive. https://media.giphy.com/media/26ufdipQqU2lhNA4g/giphy.gif. Then, youll be setting up your database, etcyou know the drill (and if you dont, refer to that tutorial link I gave you at the beginning of this section). It can be customized via a wide selection of themes, extensions and plug-ins. Ive been putting it off because I dread once again going through all the Homebrew scripts, conf file edits, virtual host setup, etc. I like that it runs on all of Windows, MacOS and Linux; I can change php versions on the fly and use perl etc. Home Applications These software listings are packaged by Bitnami. Instead you just launch the app and if its your first time running it, youll be greeted with the following screen: Local is a cross-platform application and supports all major operating systems. Then, in Windows, navigate to the folder where you installed XAMPP. The point to a localhost is to speed up development I thought. You cant use anything above PHP 8.0.0 (they have been promising an update for a long time), if on windows using Apache you must have it installed on drive C, and any sites you add must be on Drive C for it to work. The software does everything for you. Im very happy with it and I think you should include it in your next review. . In my research the main advice is SSD (of course) and Not Windows 10 because of bloatness and notorious for background services. https://fishing-en.com/why-are-my-carp-dying/. Until it collided with Windoze 10 and refused to update the "hosts" file. It also greatly reduces the risk of making and breaking changes on a live web server. Used to use VVV on Ubuntu Desktop, but MAMP works great on Windows 10. Hook that up with a blueprint, and it can install things even faster. Moved from DesktopServer to Local by Flywheel to Valet+. Also a big proponent of Valet; I was tethered to MAMP for several years, and finally decided to cut the chord (so to speak) a couple of years ago. Are there other GUI-based tools that you think I should have covered on this list? Ive always found using a Vagrant box to be the best option for an as close as possible to an actual server set up. If you have, whats your experience like? I should mention I am on Windows 10, core i5, 12GB, 1T SATA. Im also a happy Flywheel customer (after using other good VPS and managed hosting options) with no downtime or problems for the last 10 months. In practice, however, maybe not so much. Again with the acronyms here, MAMP stands for Mac Apache MySQL and PHP. I have the paid version of All-in-One. I tried using Local and loved it, but I had a problem when I was updating the CSS. https://github.com/jonathanbossenger/scotch-box I also prefer vagrant because it just works across any platform, including you poor souls who are forced to use Mac. It worked! Not really. Most of all though, you shouldnt have to be a sysadmin in order to be able to spin up, maintain, and tear down development environments on your local server. However, with MAMP Pro, you get a package installer for WordPress (and other apps) which really makes it easy to create a site in seconds. If I were working on a Windows operating system, which I might do at some point, and probably even if I were starting from scratch today, Local would be the obvious choice. As far as I can tell, DesktopServer bundles XAMPP and serves as an extension to the XAMPP server that automatically installs WordPress and handles creating virtual servers and hosts file entries for you automatically. Getting back to the core discussion by the author, does anyone know which one of these Dev Environements is the fastest??? Its involved and it requires many decisions on your part. One-click apps defaulting with WordPress, Drupal, and Laravel, but you can create more. Add your name, email and login info you want for the blog. . Install the bitnami wordpress by double-cliking the downloaded EXE file. The experience around this could be better. Thx. Definitely worth a look.. https://laragon.org/. For me, that's C://xampp. DesktopServer is super easy to use and gets you up and running with WordPress in a snap, but might be a little too basic for developers who need to test in different server environments. Expert Answers: XAMPP is more powerful and resource taking than WAMP. As a non masochist Ubuntu Linux user (#imwithian) I fart in your general direction! Let us know in the comments! Easy to set it up and you can develop just in a few minutes. Will Laravel Valet work on MacOS High Sierra? Im surprised to see it mentioned at all, let alone 4 star rating. I like the idea it just works (always on) and is very fast, but not yet convinced that working in a non-sandboxed environment is the way to go? It can do SSL with a local certificate. ah forgetten about their promise to give ex-presmattic uses Local Pro for free. Then select which folder you want to install it in, or leave it at the default (Programs). MAMP Pro picks up where MAMP left off and is well worth its $79 price tag. ;;;; ; (3/5 semicolons) Thanks for the tip. Local makes this difficult, unless you only have the theme in the repo. FYI There are also tabs for Manage Servers where you can see that MySQL and Apache are both running. All files in /opt/bitnami/wordpress are owned by the bitnami system user and the daemon group. I first tried VVV but I found it to complicated for my requirements so I ended up creating a customised version of Scotch Box that suits my needs. The default installations of Bitnami and XAMPP on the same computer will cause some conflict between the two, unless special care is taken to address this. Not really problematic, and less hassle than chasing down the components and installing them manually. It doesnt come with WP-CLI, but it is two steps to install and the it is available from any terminal window including phpStorms terminal. But before i do, I really do need to say that I appreciate the write-up AND the review. Nice roundup. Select your language now (default English). Click to install the bitnami-wordpress-4.1.1--module-windows-installer.exe file which you've downloaded. Agreed. Take a deep breath. Honestly, just keep mashing that next button. WordPress Multisite is the same software that powers Wordpress.com, enabling administrators to host and manage multiple websites from the same WordPress instance. If youve been scared off in the past by the lengthy processfor installing XAMPP and WordPress locally, theres very good news. Its unchecked, so leave it that way unless you want to be able to send email notifications from your blog once its up and going. The other tab is Server Events. Heres a taste of how easy it was for me to install it on my laptop. Launch applications to the cloud with one click. I cant say enough nice things about Local. Its great for tinkerers as you can create little auto-installers and scripts and mess with a lot of the defaults and config files. "Local" by Flywheel, is a great alternative. Setting up a site in Local usually takes 60-90 seconds for me, and using the site feels fast too. and Wamp, Local by Flywheel was a BREATH OF FRESH air!! I had been working with MAMP Pro for years, but wanted something that gave me more control and found a great post on setting up the whole gamut via Homebrew. ;;;; ; (4/5 semicolons) Its just tough when something breaks, but they do have a really good community of people who can help. Don't forget to add WordPress packaged by Bitnami to your favorites. One may work well with AWS plugins and services and the other just needs a searchable database. Nice review, but the only thing that sucks is: I cannot install local by flywheel on my laptop. Ive been using AMPPS for years. "Local by Flywheel" could not. The issues were gong after deleted Macport and reinstalled Homebrew. Back to Local, I guess. Thanks for this post I thinks its sort of funny that Im reading this while in the background Migrate DB Pro is migrating stuff from a Local Im also so over this "by Flywheel" stuff to a MAMP Pro install. it is easy to configure and use. An easy-to-use local testing server is one of the most important tools in a WordPress developers utility belt. http://documentation.mamp.info/en/MAMP-PRO-Mac/Settings/Hosts/Extras/WordPress/ Also MAMP (Pro) does come for Windows. Download the Bitnami Stack Application, Right-click on setup, and select run as administration An install window will pop up - select YES. I had thought that at some point in this process I would be able to select a hostname like wp-local.dev, but this wasnt the case. Additionally, it installs MAMP Pro which you can use as a free trial for 2 weeks but will cost you $79 after that. The Ultimate Checklist of Questions You Should Ask Every New Customer. You just launch the installer package and mash at the next button until you realize that you actually clicked a button that said finish. These websites can all have unique domain names and can be customized by their owners, while sharing assets such as themes and plugins that are made available by the server admin.