Bringing the Best Developer Tools to the Best Platform for WordPress

As a technology company that helps customers win online, WP Engine strives to delight developers by providing them with the best platform for building and maintaining WordPress sites.

This takes shape in a number of ways, like providing customers free access to the Genesis Framework and StudioPress themes or supporting different developer workflow methods that simply make life easier for WordPress site builders.  

Now that Local is integrated with WP Engine’s platform, we wanted to offer a closer look at what this suite of developer tools means for site builders of all skill levels and why it makes building on our platform the best experience available for developers today. 

Download Local Today!

At its core, Local is—you guessed it—a local development application beloved by more than 150,000 developers around the globe. People love Local because it provides them with a safe place to experiment and develop new features faster. It also lets developers focus on what’s important—launching WordPress sites—rather than spending all their time debugging local environments.

One of the most common benefits Local users cite is its intuitive and easy-to-use interface, which makes it possible to publish sites with just a few clicks, easily pull down live sites for offline edits, and sync various dev tools for an overall simplified workflow. 

Read on to find out why more developers choose Local for building their sites, and how you can start putting this awesome suite of developer tools to use today! 

Hassle-free local WordPress development 

One of the first things Local users point out is how fast and functional the platform is. Local is known for speed and simplicity—it’s easy to set up and use, and you can get started in minutes with a simple installation process, an intuitive user interface, and easy site creation. 

Local also offers fast, easy ways to modify and interact with your sites (for example, hot-swap PHP versions or enable SSL), and you can save sites as blueprints to get a head start on your next project. Once you’ve made changes or have something you want to bounce off a co-worker or client, you can easily share your work with others using Livelink.  

Showing off your latest work is finally simple! Create shareable URLs to demo your local WordPress sites to clients, collaborators, friends, or adoring fans. 

Powerful developer tools 

Another important factor that makes Local stand out is its powerful suite of developer tools. In addition to the increased productivity that comes with utilizing best-in-class tools, Local lets users interact with local sites using shell tools like WP-CLI. Users can also view, test, and debug website mail with MailHog, and they can investigate website behavior using PHP, NGINX, and MySQL logs. Another popular Local feature is debugging PHP issues with Xdebug. 

Seamless integration and support with WP Engine and Flywheel

Because Local is seamlessly integrated with both WP engine and Flywheel, setting up, deploying, and testing your sites is now easier than ever. Users can seamlessly push and pull sites from either platform, and they can replicate server configurations from both WP Engine and Flywheel to ensure their sites are behaving properly. 

Another major benefit of integrating Local with WP Engine’s platform is the access users gain to WP Engine’s award-winning, expert support. Get help with WordPress, available 24/7.

See below for a full list of features included with Local 

Start using Local today!

We’re excited about what this integration means for our customers and WordPress developers around the globe. Stay tuned as we’ll be adding more to Local and WP Engine’s platform over the coming months! 

Click here for more information about the other exciting integrations we’re undertaking from the Flywheel acquisition last year. And click here to download Local and start using it today!