Everyone’s Going Local 🏠
Josh Koenig announced the first release of Pantheon Localdev, a local dev app for the Mac (Windows and Linux “coming soon”) that is built on top of Docker and Lando with a GUI for working on sites and deploying to Pantheon.
This announcement follows the launch of a similar tool from WPEngine called DevKit. Add to this the existence of Local by FlyWheel (recently acquired by WPEngine), and it’s not surprising that conversations started appearing on Twitter about the necessity of these “custom dev tools” and how they might lock users into these hosts. 🔒
Morten Rand-Hendriksen posed the idea of a single, standard tool for deploying code to WordPress sites, and an interesting discussion ensued. I don’t see this happening anytime soon — at least from the major hosts as they battle it out — but it’s something I would like to see someday.
While it doesn’t have a local development app, LiquidWeb is partnering with WPMerge and Affiliate WP to add them to their managed hosting bundles for WordPress and WooCommerce at no extra charge.
A tool for merging staging and production site databases like WPMerge is a must-have for eCommerce sites.
