Julian Medina shares his adventures in local WordPress development with MAMP

1. Having Fun with Local
Development
Julian Medina
@julianlmedina

2. Why go Local?
● Faster
● No chance of breaking the live site. Ex.
Recently I found out that if I upgraded a
certain plugin it would've somehow
magically broken the footer (don't ask me
how :)). Fortunately I tested this out Locally.
● And the list goes on and on

3. Downsides of Local
Development
● From personal experience, it can be a drag
taking over an existing site and working on it
locally. This has included taking over a site
with >10 MB Database and a pretty bulky
wp-content directory.
● Some clients seem to not like it either
because they can't see the site being built.
This is often remedied by making a "Stage"
site.
● Different server configuration than live
server.

4. Software
● XAMPP
● MAMP (If you're on a Mac)
● WAMP
● Homebrew + MySQL (Haven't tried it yet)

5. Starting a site locally
● Install WordPress locally
● Develop the site
● Upload the site via an FTP Client or SSH.
● Upload the Database via phpMyAdmin
Warnings
● Links may not work after going local
● Site may not function because you're missing
something.
● A whole lot of other things can go wrong...

6. Existing live site to local tips
● Good ways of troubleshooting seem to
include deactivating all plugins. This can
either be done through phpMyAdmin or
renaming your plugins folder.
● A good last resort (that ended up working),
delete the entire WordPress directory locally
and re-download via FTP.

7. Great Sites for Help
● WordPress Codex (http://codex.wordpress.
org/Moving_WordPress, http://codex.wordpress.
org/Installing_WordPress_Locally_on_Your_Mac_Wit
h_MAMP)
● Google
● Smashing Magazine - Developing WordPress Locally
With MAMP (http://wp.smashingmagazine.
com/2011/09/28/developing-wordpress-locally-with-
mamp/)