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This Post Was Composed with LocalWP

On my “to try” list for a while now is LocalWP, an application to streamline the process of working with WordPress locally. Put another way, you can build a WordPress website on your local computer and then use WPLocal to push that site online. Why would you do this you ask? There are several reasons, chief amongst them being speed. Here’s why I like LocalWP and will consider working it into my normal workflow.:

  1. It’s fast. While WPEngine is fast, the speed of interacting with any website that isn’t hosted locally is a result of many factors including your Internet connection speed and daily traffic levels. WPLocal is operating on your local computer which for the most part bypasses any reliance on your Internet connection.
  2. Good for travel. For those that travel and rely on cellular Internet access, closely managing your bandwidth usage is key to survival. Because WPLocal works mostly offline, this reduces the amount of bandwidth used and is of course much faster than working online if your connection is poor.
  3. Another staging environment. While WPEngine features a robust and easy-to-use staging environment system, working locally gives you another staging environment, to queue your updates and protect you (from yourself) from screwing up a live website.
  4. Tight integration with WPEngine. LocalWP will connect directly to WPEngine using their API, which is easily enabled. You can then view all of your sites, and “pull” any of them locally, to be edited and then pushed back live.
  5. It’s free. The Community version is free, and LocalWP claims it will stay that way. Pro adds a few features, and priority support which makes sense if you’re going to make LocalWP an integral part of your team’s process.

While I’ve only scratched the surface of what LocalWP can offer, I’m pleased to find the toolset to be simple and powerful.

**Update**

Upon pushing my local changes live, I had an issue. The local domain: josiahcole.local did not update to the live domain: josiahcole.com – A quick chat with WPEngine support solved the issue, however the root cause is still unkown. I will udpate this post the next time I attempt to publish vis LocalWP.

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