Local Dev Environment Software
I’ve used several different systems (MAMP, XAMPP, DOCKER, Studio), and I prefer Local over all of them. It’s effortless and fast to quickly spin up as many local dev sites as you want, and it’s fully free. When WP Engine acquired Flywheel in 2019, it also got Local. So it’s got a multi-billion dollar company (Silver Lake private equity) backing it. If you create a free account, you’ll be able to install a bunch of awesome extensions like Link Checker, Image Optimizer, and Instant Reload. It offers root SSH access, WP-CLI, and the ability to hot-swap PHP environments for easy testing. Furthermore, it’s available for Mac, Windows, and Linux, so no matter what OS the rest of your team is using, you can all have a similar set up. This is helpful, since when you’re all using the same software platform, if anyone encounters a bug or roadblock, other team members are more likely to have ideas on how to resolve that.
For a comparison of local against other options, check out this article from Jetpack.
Standardizing Development Environment
To maintain consistency across the development team, it’s crucial that all team members use the same versions of PHP, MySQL, and WordPress. This minimizes the risk of environment-specific bugs and ensures that what works in one developer’s local setup will work across the entire team.
To standardize these versions, make sure to define the exact versions of PHP, MySQL, and WordPress in your project documentation.
Having a synchronized environment will reduce conflicts and bugs that only occur in certain versions of the software, making debugging faster and more effective.
Using Local SSL Certificates
In order to truly mirror production environments, it’s important to use SSL certificates locally as well. Having HTTPS set up in your development environment ensures you catch issues related to SSL early, such as mixed content errors or the behavior of cookies with secure flags.
Here’s a quick guide on how to use MacOS’s Keychain Access to trust a local SSL certificate for your development domain.
How to Trust a Local SSL Certificate on MacOS Using Keychain Access
Generate or locate your SSL certificate
If you don’t have an SSL certificate for your local domain yet, you can generate a self-signed certificate using OpenSSL:
$: openssl req -x509 -out local.crt -keyout local.key -newkey rsa:2048 -nodes -sha256 -subj '/CN=your-local-domain' -extensions EXT -config <(printf "[dn]\nCN=your-local-domain\n[req]\ndistinguished_name = dn\n[EXT]\nsubjectAltName=DNS:your-local-domain\nkeyUsage=digitalSignature\nextendedKeyUsage=serverAuth") Replace your-local-domain with the domain you’re using locally (e.g., myproject.local).
If you’re using Local, there’s a green “trust” link for this:
However, that hasn’t worked for me for the past couple of years, so after clicking it, you’ll want to do the following:
1) Open Keychain Access
Go to Applications > Utilities > Keychain Access.
2) Search for the domain you’ve added for this site
right-click on it, and select Get Info. Expand the Trust section and set When using this certificate to Always Trust.
3) Restart Your Browser
Once the certificate is trusted, restart your browser for the changes to take effect.
Your local domain should now be accessible over HTTPS without any warnings, making it easier to replicate the security setup of your production environment.