If you also belong to the group of developers that can’t think beyond Local WordPress development, let us tells you one thing: you’re missing a transformative development experience.
Showing loyalty to this outdated approach is going to make your voyage to successful WordPress development tough with hassles like limited testing and tweaking.
Tools like InstaWP are here to revolutionize your workflow and take your development process beyond the confines of your local environment. With its help, developers can easily say goodbye to complex setup processes, compatibility issues, and the headache of managing multiple local environments.
Let’s explore the true power of InstaWP and why it should be considered an ideal LocalWP alternative.
Local WordPress Development and Why to Avoid it Now?
With local WordPress development, we mean a traditional approach of setting up a WordPress development ecosystem on your computer so that you can work on it without having an active internet connection or owning a live server.
While this approach seems to have a seamless development process using which developers can have a development ecosystem at their deposal, it’s never a risk-free approach.
In fact, in an era where being perfect is more than being readily available, local WordPress development is pulling developers down instead of uplifting them.
The Downsides
Local WordPress development is no longer as useful as it used to be past. The more complex WordPress development process becomes, the more irrelevant local WordPress development becomes. The frequent need for testing and disposing the testing environments makes it an infeasible pick for today. An online sandbox environment
Here is a list of the downsides of using WordPress local development.
- It keeps you completely isolated from the live site, which is not always a good idea because this isolation will lead to a complete replication of the live server or hosting ecosystem. This isolation will also lead to hiding certain issues of the live site and carrying forward some bugs in the local development.
- It makes you extremely dependent on the hardware and your system performance. Developers with devices having limited RAM or processing power will have slower processing. So, such a WordPress local development is not liable for complex and heavy-build websites.
- Your hands are tight when it comes to collaboration. It’s not easy to bring dispersed teams together and collaborate. Multiple developers can’t work on a single project simultaneously. Hence, development becomes tedious and time-consuming.
- Dependency management becomes tough with this approach. Developers have to install multiple software and hardware to set up a local WordPress development process. Beyond the installation, developers even have to take care of updates and version controls as well. All these things become too overwhelming for one developer to handle.
- Local web development can result in data discrepancies in some cases, as there will be differences in the configurations and settings.
- Local development environments are typically not as secure as live servers. Since they are not publicly accessible, developers might be less cautious about security measures, such as regularly updating WordPress themes, and plugins, which could pose risks when deploying the site.
- Local development may not fully account for differences in browsers or devices that visitors might use. Cross-browser compatibility and responsiveness testing should be done separately to ensure a consistent experience for users.
- There are severe backup concerns and limitations with WordPress local development. Unlike hosted environments, local development setups may not have automated backup systems. As a result, you need to be diligent about manual backups to avoid potential data loss.
Considering all these limitations, it’s easy to say that WordPress local development is now more of a headache than a help. This is why WordPress development experts are now making a paradigm shift by adopting an online WordPress development process.
What Makes WordPress Development in an Online Environment Beneficial?
- Easily accessible and makes development convenient because multiple projects can be accessed by different developers at a time on any device. The only thing that they need is an active internet connection.
- Highly collaboration-friendly, as developers can collaborate in real time without any conflicts.
- Great for instant set-up and scalability as developers don’t have to get engaged in manual installation and configuration, saving valuable time.
- Capable of creating a more realistic real-ecosystem replication. This ensures that the issues you encounter during development are more likely to be present in the production environment, reducing the risk of unexpected behavior when deploying your website.
- Not at all burdensome, as there is no need to look after the maintenance and update of the development ecosystem.
- Great for enhancing the security of the development system because it’s easy to create a staging site in WordPress, apply SSL encryption on it, and control the access as well.
- Highly viable from an integration perspective because the online development process integrates with useful web development tools like version control systems, automated testing, and continuous integration.
- Super supportive when it comes to backup and recovery, as developers can take backup from anywhere and anytime.
WordPress Development with InstaWP
InstaWP is a great cloud-based WordPress development environment that developers of the modern era don’t hesitate to use for their WordPress projects. It provides a convenient and efficient way to build, test, and manage WordPress projects without the limitations of a local environment.
Let’s have a look at its key offerings.
No Assets Required
While you’re bound to own and manage multiple development resources, InstaWP sets you free from this requirement. It lets you start WordPress development without installing any software or components on your computer. Everything you need to develop and manage WordPress projects is hosted and provided by InstaWP’s cloud-based platform.
Set up a Demo Site for Display in No Time
If you own a WordPress development agency, InstaWP is going to be a great help for you because you can easily have a demo site ready in no time. This demo site can be used for showcasing your work to clients, partners, or stakeholders. This ensures that you can share your progress and get feedback without the hassle of deploying to a live server.
If you have a product (e.g., a plugin or a theme), you can use InstaWP as your demo launcher and boost your sales. You can can do complete branding of your product’s demo.
Check this ClickWhale Demo, created using InstaWP
Quick Staging/Cloning
Having staging and cloning is important when one aims to develop flawless websites as it allows developers to test any theme and plugin without impacting the performance of the live site.
However, local WordPress development makes staging site generation a very hectic process.
InstaWP enables the rapid creation of staging environments or the cloning of existing projects. Creating a WordPress staging site with InstaWP is a matter of a few clicks here and there. You can build a site from scratch or select a template to get started.
In addition, you can protect the staging site with SSL encryption. So, InstaWP allows you to test changes or new features without affecting the live site, making it easier to identify and fix issues before deploying updates.
Download 1-Click WP Staging Plugin – InstaWP Connect
Easy Collaboration
Great websites are built with a great team that is linked together and can collaborate without any delays. This collaboration is missed completely in WordPress local development, whereas InstaWP facilitates smooth collaboration among developers and team members.
As it’s a cloud-based tool, different developers can access one project from multiple locations. No wonder many developers consider InstaWP as the best LocalWP alternative.
Simplified Testing
Offline or local development makes testing too tedious because of limited collaboration and communication. But, testing on InstaWP is simplified as it provides a real environment replication, minimizing discrepancies between the development and production environments.
Git Integration
Git and WordPress development are like hands in the gloves as developers need this version control system to manage the code history and track the code changes. With local development, Git integration is nowhere to be seen and experienced.
However, it’s easy to enjoy Git integration with a single click with InstaWP. This integration empowers developers so much that development becomes easier than before.
Great Tools like Code Editor and Database Editor
WordPress development is itself a very tedious task, and developers need more handling hands to make it simplified. However, advanced InstaWP tools like Code Editor and Database Editor are missed greatly in local development.
InstaWP offers built-in code and database editors, providing a seamless development experience without the need for external tools. These integrated editors make it convenient to work on your projects directly within the platform. You can edit the codes, track the code changes, and even analyze the impact of a code change on the performance of the live website.
Save Multiple Versions of your Project
With InstaWP, you can easily save and create multiple versions of your WordPress projects as separate InstaWP sites and bring them all together using InstaConnect. This is a great help when it comes to handling a huge project and backing up your huge work.
InstaWP is also great for trying different designs or feature directions or even creating staging environments for testing new ideas.
Go live as and when required.
Migrating a site from production to the live stage is possible with InstaWP, as it allows seamless transitions from development to the live server stage.
Handle multiple projects from one dashboard.
If you’ve multiple sites to manage, InstaWP is a great tool to manage multiple WordPress sites from a single dashboard. You don’t have to log in to different sites differently. With one user name, access to all of the sites and projects is possible. You get a centralized site management system that will keep all your WordPress projects in place.
It’s easy to keep data protected.
You’re prone to lose all your development data with local WordPress development when there is a power cut, or there is a system failure. But, this fear of data loss is no longer to haunt you if you’re using an InstaWP.
As it’s a cloud-based tool, all of your data will be saved automatically on the server and your cloud resources. There is no risk of losing data if there is a hardware failure or power cut.
Additionally, the tool allows you to enable SSH/SFTP for each of your site.
All in all, WordPress development with InstaWP offers speed, convenience, collaboration, and enhanced project management features.
Conclusion
When we’re surrounded with WordPress development that should be quick, collaborative, secure, and streamlined, local WordPress development is no longer irrelevant and bogs down one developer. Achieving perfection is no longer possible with WordPress local development.
It’s high time to consider an online development environment like InstaWP. Designed to simplify WordPress development at every level, InstaWP is a great tool that helps developers to overcome the limitations of local WordPress development with features like no installation, multiple site handling, easy integration, facility to go live as and when required, simplified testing, and many more. So, don’t hold yourself back, and go ahead. The tool offers a free and paid version.
Both are equally good and can streamline your WordPress development at every level. Once you try it, there is no looking back, as you’ll be amazed to see its endless development capabilities.
