Im the author of Pilothouse (http://www.pilothouse-app.org/), which is a free/open source CLI app for managing a Docker-based local development environment, with a focus on WordPress and Laravel development. ;;;;, (4.5/5 semicolons) Yeah, updates on MAMP Pro are always at least a bit stressful made worse by the fact that theyve been releasing quite a bit lately. Ive used XAMPP for years and am very familiar with it as a result. The issues were gong after deleted Macport and reinstalled Homebrew. Ive wanted to do local development for a while, but found it to be too hard to configure. Beats the rest by a long margin because it is so easy to do. We have another complete article covering Laravel Valet, VVV ( Vagrant), Chassis, etc. Noties: WordPress will install phpmyadmin and Apache, therefor it will not need Xampp. Don't forget to add WordPress packaged by Bitnami to your favorites. Agreed, excellent rundown however Im running the same setup as smcrtv. You alsohave to name things like databases, and answer questions relating to those names. WP is only what it is due to the open source and community. 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. Im not super impressed with XAMPP for this reason alone. Thanks for the tip. What is XAMPP? Though their most recent version Local Lightning only supports one addon out of 5, offering you to enable XDebug support for PHPStorm. A couple of the releases had some problems, but most of the time I have been very happy with Local and will continue using it until something better comes along , Ive been using Mamp Pro for the last year. Bitnami Application Catalog Find your favorite application in our catalog and launch it. Perhaps installing WP the long way, using XAMPP gives you features and control you dont have when you go the Bitnami Route, but I didnt discover what those might be in my research. What if you want to local dev the same site on your desktop and laptop? 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. 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. 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. If you know of any advantages to installing a local version of WP via XAMPP over Bitnami, please chime in and straighten me out. If you use HyperV on Win10, Windows virtualization suite (which is rock solid virtualization), you cant run Local and unfortunately Local just hangs on startup No error message, no progress, no log, it just hangs on the startup screen. 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. Its fast, has a good cPanel and all the tools we tend to like such as phpAdmin and 1-click installs for WordPress. I stand corrected. 2- Then install It's simple. WAMP vs XAMPP Server - What's the Difference? 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. This (Windoze & 3rd party workarounds) are probably exactly the reason that there are "some kind of Linux users". 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. I like it for other reasons! Like DesktopServer, Local is a WordPress-centric offering, so whenever you create a new site, its a WordPress site out of the box. In the future we plan to support different WordPress installations. jsphpajax I only use WordPress for my writing jobs and not for developing WP interfaces, so Im an end user. - DiMithras Nov 29, 2022 at 22:27 Add your name, email and login info you want for the blog. Weve tried DesktopServer and it was ok, but Im very curious to try Local. C:\xampp\htdocs\wordpress. First off, the 3-site limit. Longtime Laravel user and didnt know about that, thanks for sharing! https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/48541d4f1b1f608680571d013b091b8d2723475f448db118bca53ed2bd0dc2d3.png. . 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. Ive been using Laragon for the past year on Windows and have been very impressed with it. Laravel Valet is such a neat command line software to use in the Mac environment. Not really problematic, and less hassle than chasing down the components and installing them manually. Its true that most of these things have workarounds, but the idea is to be efficient with time and thats our focus. Some seeminly simple things like finding where PHP is installed on Local can melt you mindit took me 2 hours to set up VSCode to use Local on Windows. Login as root + the password that you set on wordpress installation. The best dev environment for wordpress plugins and themes by far IMO. You need to enable "dev mode", which will disable the aggressive caching. Not really, Ive been using Local myself recently and dont have any issues running the plugin. Im a 65 year old web developer newbie. At minimum, look into Laravel Valet , Composer , and Bedrock . I write highly researched content in a conversational toneview my samples here: http://ivyleaguecontent.com/#work. Couldnt quite believe how easy it was. 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. please do not use Local. These software listings are packaged by Bitnami. AIO does it in a couple of clicks. Local also supports community developed addons which helps you modify and extend the apps functionality. Ive been using AMPPS for years. Quick note: after an update left Valet+ unable to start, and then having to spend a few hours getting the far too many spinning wheels needed for it to somehow magically realign, Ive switched back to Mamp Pro, and for the last week or so have been quite happy using it. Get rid of your existing XAMPP installation and start fresh with the one Bitnami will install for you. Bitnami Cloud Images extend stack appliances to run in a cloud computing environment. I'd suggest you download and install xampp. Heres a taste of how easy it was for me to install it on my laptop. I too use MAMP Pro myself, as well as Local for quick playgrounds. XAMPP isnt all bad. Will Laravel Valet work on MacOS High Sierra? 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. 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. Cant recommend Laravel Valet enough! It lets you customize username, password, database user/password etc during the process. If your applications . Is checking this box all you need to do to get FollowSymLink working or is there more? I wrote an article a little while ago about integrating Laravel tools into WP development that should help anybody get up and running with Valet. Just pop the following into the command prompt (make sure you're in the same directory as installer) bitnami-wordpress*.exe --wordpress_instance_name blog1. No, thats not a trick question. Duplicator Pro still needs a pile of other actions and knowledge to get the job done. Valet is something Im looking forward to trying in near future too, been hearing nice things about it. You can also configure different MySQL/PHP versions per site while creating it, with the option to download different versions. Sometimes useful, so might as well leave the box checked. Additionally, it installs MAMP Pro which you can use as a free trial for 2 weeks but will cost you $79 after that. I only use Windows at Home and use Mac at the Office. Its much less intuitive when you just want to check on the state of things. Whereby I just dont get it. You might get an alert that tells you Windows Firewall has blocked some features of this app. Its really the best of both worlds between something like DesktopServer or MAMP and the more advanced/developer-focused WordPress development environments. 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. Then select which folder you want to install it in, or leave it at the default (Programs). Local is near perfection. Migration should be part and parcel of any package, free or otherwise. Ive checked the FollowSymLink in Apache section, but I still get a 403 forbidden error. The best dev environment available for Windows today is Ubuntu on Windows, free for Win 10 by Microsoft. Didnt know about this, will probably try soon. Keep both PHPMyAdmin and WordPress marked Theres a better way, and its called Bitnami. In the XAMPP folder there is the htdocs folder. You just launch the installer package and mash at the next button until you realize that you actually clicked a button that said finish. Replace the * with your version and blog1 with the name of your site. Blogs and articles and infographics, oh my! Finally, I set up MAMP. Otherwise, Id have been lost at sea. Perhaps installing WP the long way, using XAMPP gives you features and control you dont have when you go the Bitnami Route, but I didnt discover what those might be in my research. 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. The default is to install phpMyAdmin, which is the admin panel you would use if you were going to go in an monkey with your WordPress database. Theres more to this three site limitation, as explained by Marc Benzakein, Operations Manager at ServerPress. Its actually slower than working on my website online. Next I tried just setting up a LAMP stack and ran into never ending MySql errors, regardless of how I installed MySql or MariaDB. What was the solution if you did? Because everything runs in Docker containers, it leaves a very small footprint on your system. Activate the "All-In-One WP Migration" plugin. Desktop Server is great too! C:\Bitnami\wordpress-5.8.3-0\apps\wordpress\htdocs. . I use XAMPP on Windows 10 Pro for various webdev projects. What is Bitnami? Just upload the file to your WP site from the DASHBOARD. 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. Thanks for the reminder! Good info. Im very happy with it and I think you should include it in your next review. Its like I am driving an easily controlled manual car now. This article was originally written by Jeff Gould in 2017 and has since been updated. The software is . This helps to avoid issues when uploading files to the stack. Simply allow Apache HTTP Server to communicate on these networks. and the default is that your private home network is checked. I started using Local (By Flywheel) a few months ago and like being able to easily match my local PHP version to my live one. Local does a great job isolating its software, and you can even use Local alongside something like MAMP or XAMPP. And by Kansas, we mean theMad Men Is it content, or is it marketing? Its just tough when something breaks, but they do have a really good community of people who can help. You have to know to choose Apache, phpmyadmin, mySQL etc, which means installation is no walk in the park. WP-CLI is something I cant live without personally but as long as it can be installed, I dont see any problems there. Easy to set it up and you can develop just in a few minutes. 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. 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. Thanks for the Valet Plus pointer. WordPress packaged by Bitnami provides a one-click install solution for WordPress. If youre making use of WP-CLI in your daily workflow, you might dislike Local. Are there other GUI-based tools that you think I should have covered on this list? Ill give XAMPP the benefit of the doubt and say that maybe the Mac app is just their weak link. If you do, youll get port conflicts as well as some MySQL errors. Local is the fastest and most intuitive and well designed application among all. From there, it offers links to download bitnami modules for WordPress and other applications. Im not much for managed WordPress hosting, I like a normal LAMP environment for ease of use with GIT personally, but I think youre article accurately sums up these tools. Locals "Lightning" update has made things quite fast, I wonder how it would compare with Laragon. It has a GUI for installing WordPress as well as lots of other software. Ive done everything to try and rectify this, ie. Because its built for WordPress development specifically, the DesktopServer app is primarily a wizard that lets you install new WordPress installs under their own .dev.cc domain names. Launch applications to the cloud with one click. Home Applications These software listings are packaged by Bitnami. Bitnami for XAMPP greatly simplifies the development of PHP applications on top of ApacheFriends XAMPP, by installing WordPress and many more open source applications on top of XAMPP. Bitnami vs WordPress | What are the differences? However, Local does come with 2-3 pre-installed versions of PHP which makes it easier to test in different environments. Uncheck this unless you want to learn about cloud hosting through Bitnami. Honestly, Im only withholding the last semicolon because I still have two more reviews to do and I dont want to have to refactor this highly intuitive rating system. Add your name, email and login info you want for the blog. ; M - Stands for MySQL, which is the stack's database management system. Local also comes with WP-CLI installed by default, but you cant just open up your sites folder and start running WP-CLI commands. It can be customized via a wide selection of themes, extensions and plug-ins. Anybody have a favorite WP cloning tool or method theyd like to share? Not really. 3- copy the wordpress files from the installation. Find your favorite application in our catalog and launch it. SHAMPs XAMPPs interface, at least on MacOS, is less than intuitive. Until it collided with Windoze 10 and refused to update the "hosts" file. I switched from MAMP to Laravel Valet directly and I am so glad I did it. WordPress packaged by Bitnami is pre-configured and ready-to-use immediately on any of the platforms below. Just hopped onto the Bitnami community and found out how to create multiple sites. Once youve chosen your local development environment tool, see our advice on the best setup for your local WordPress development environment. Also, its completely free. But before i do, I really do need to say that I appreciate the write-up AND the review. WordPress Multisite is the same software that powers Wordpress.com, enabling administrators to host and manage multiple websites from the same WordPress instance. 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. For example, with XAMP, you have to pick and choose which components you want to install, which means you have to know what they are. It pains me to say it. 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). Heres How They Fit Together. Simply allow Apache HTTP Server to communicate on these networks. and the default is that your private home network is checked. Yup, following in the footsteps of other open source enthusiasts like Rasmus Lerdorf, Mark Suttleworth and Richard Stallman. 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. MAMP, like XAMPP, doesnt give you much help in creating virtual hosts. My experience of MAMP Pro on Windows was that it went kablooie every time I tried to set permalinks, though that is apparently not a universal problem. Thanks for the Mamp mysql warning. I started with MAMP a long time ago, then DesktopServer, then Pressmatic / Local. Thx. https://sridhar.blog/tag/valet/ https://sridharkatakam.com/browsersync-in-laravel-valet/, Loved the review, and more importantly your sense of humor (were all too serious sometimes). Domain management. Recently installed Valet to give it a try (as local doesnt yet work with High Sierra which I rushed into installing on a machine). Especially for non-technical people who rely on WordPress for their livelihood, Bitnami makes a ton of sense because its worlds easier than the alternatives. Again with the acronyms here, MAMP stands for Mac Apache MySQL and PHP. I have used Xampp but find the method to add Virtual servers (more than one web site) "interesting" it sometimes works. Expert Answers: XAMPP is more powerful and resource taking than WAMP. I shouldn't be too hard on you: Bitnami isn't completely awful, but when you're dealing with Wordpress, there are much better standards nowadays that encourage modern development practices. For MacOS, youll need to install WordPress directly in XAMPPs site directory as recently OS X native modules have been deprecated. This time the server started up as expected. Ram is a PHP developer from India. The latest version (as of April 2018) uses PHP v.7.