Is it worth having a local offline setup of your site on your laptop?
I have been planning to write this post since a very long time, however with all the craziness around me surrounding my 2.5 years old son, I wasn't able to complete the draft.
Just few months back, I was planning to learn "all-things-wordpress", and I came across this functionality on Windows 8, where through Microsoft Webmatrix, you can install wordpress on your local machine, create your own local desktop site and have your own control panel, database etc.
Your site url would look something like http://localhost:12345/ and your admin login will be on http://localhost:12345/wp-admin/
I did my local site setup just to learn things, however, now as I have started learning more about themes and plugins, I can see how valuable this local set up has been for me so far.
I can play around with multiple themes, change the stuffs, coding etc. Test new wordpress themes, before actually deciding to install any of these themes or plugins on my priceless "online" site.
Ofcourse, this local set up is only accessible to me, for obvious reasons, but I would definitely recommend you to get it done on your laptops/pcs too if you have Windows 8 installed, if you hate all-things-constant and are quite excited about playing around with thousands of themes and plugins, without actually breaking your site or user experience.
You can check the details about this here : http://www.microsoft.com/web/wordpress
I hope it helps! :)
Another update on my growth - I got few more Amazon sales in my kitty and these sales were of bigger stuffs, so got more bucks! :D
To your success!
Kimi
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I personally don't work locally, there is no benefit unless you are working on more enteprise applications. For Wordpress, definitely not.
I personally work on my content independently of Wordpress (I use Google Docs) and this can be used offline. So even without the Internet, you can still be productive and also you have a back-up of your content. Just my thoughts.
Congrats on your growth thus far and the Amazon sales, you are doing awesome Kimi!
For the content, I would totally agree that a local copy of Wordpress is a bit pointless and far better to retain it in other forms.
I like to create content in plain text files first which I retain. Then copy over and format in Wordpress. That way if you accidently hit the delete key or backspace you still have your original content elsewhere.
I use my local Wordpress site copy for testing out plugins and design elements so then only my final choices go live. This helps to keep the database clean and optimized to a greater extent.
Creating your final content locally first before copying to Wordpress also helps to reduce the number of revisions stored in the database improving performance. I am a DBA which might explain my thought processes.
Hi Kimi
This is not a solution that is generally mentioned within IM training, don't know why?
This is definitely worth the while not only for training/beginners bit also for established Web sites as you can play around with design and extras without fear of trashing your main site. But you do have a backup DON'T YOU!
For windows 7 you have the very good AMPPs software which includes the softaculous WordPress installation script which many of you may have come across at your domain hosts.
Search for WAMP, MAMP or LAMP depending on your environment in your favourite search engine for various solutions for this.
M = Mac, W = Windows & L=Linux
AMP short for Apache,MySQL & PHP These are the environments required to create a website.
To be honest, if you have Linux you probably have everything you need already.
This all sounds very technical but not too bad and a lot of tutorials available on the net.
I use my Linux based NAS storage for this these days however I only changed to my NAS unit so I could easily set up and test to work from my various mobile devices without leaving my PC on all the time.
Ampps is particularly straightforward to install for windows and was the environment I was using previously. So this is the one I would recommend for windows. Ampps is also FREE, by the way.
Dave
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Hahaha, someone who understands systems processes, can code directly and develop on the go. :-)
From a developer point of view, it's great to be able to drag your "dev" platform around on your laptop. I have done it for years. Do your development and then just upload content when your ready.
The "geek" picture of sitting at an airport, doing some work while waiting for your next flight is something I can totally relate to. :-)
Everyone around you are totally oblivious that you are working on your own "mini" internet.
On the downside, when I lost my lappy it was a hard road back. Now I replicate between a Windows 2012 VPS and my lappy. Gives me the ability to develop off my server when I want as well as the option of developing off my laptop when I don't have any internet connection. (Which isn't often now days :-) )
Steve.