The Switch to Devil Box for Local WordPress Development
As some of you may know, WordPress developers often use a local environment to test and build a WordPress site. Not only does this save time, it also saves money because you don’t need a hosting account. This does however bring with it a few problems.
The move from Mac to Windows
I recently migrated from Mac to Windows. The main reason, I just don’t feel like I get value from Apple anymore. The Macbook Pro with 32GB ram and decent storage is a ridiculous amount for what it is. With more PCs having a nice form factor and good battery life, I made the switch.
This came with a couple of problems. My beloved Screenflow doesn’t work and Terminal, the place all real coders like to live, was taken from me.
The terminal is that black screen with the green text you see hackers using in the movies. It’s my happy place and with the move to Windows, I no longer had this wonderful tool.
Windows has alternatives, but it still took a bit of getting used to.
I also had been using Laravel Valet for my Laravel projects and often used local development directly on my MAC using MAMP. With MAMP working in sync with my terminal in Mac I was able to use Composer, GIT and one of my favourite tools, WP CLI.
With the installation of Local from Flywheel, I got a fair few of my issues resolved for WordPress development, for Laravel however it was not that great.
I missed Redis and the ability to install Maria DB or Postgres in Local from Flywheel.
This lead to a new solution… Devilbox
Devilbox is open source and rocks. Installing it on Windows was tricky. It was not that clear I was missing things when I started. If you want to install Devil Box on Windows make sure you have the following installed before starting,
- 1. Windows Professional. You need the Hyper V tools that come with Windows for Docker to work its magic.
- 2. A Docker Installation – its free so that was no problem.
- 3. I also need GIT Bash – Again its free and I already had it setup.
After that, a simple setup of Devilbox now has me with a fantastic environment for developing WordPress extensions and Laravel in the one place.
Domain management is easy enough and I have to recommend it as the best solution I have found thus far.
I will make a few more in-depth tutorials in 2019 for the whole Divi Community and I’m sure you guys will enjoy this solution. It’s flexible and allows you to do more than the other solutions I have found.
