No More Cowboy Coding!

So you have been developing your websites on your client’s server? What a no-no! Bad site builder. 🙂 Or you have been using some other solution such as MAMP or WAMP, or other solution that does not share well with your colleagues.

Why? Because using it more professional approach is hard! Maybe you’ve tried to use a Vagrant box like VVV or VIP Quickstart, but after 3 days and too much loss of hair you gave up and went back to your old ways of doing things.

But you don’t have to do it that way anymore!

This session will show you the almost brain-dead easy way to start using a professional-grade approach to local WordPress development and debugging. And if you are motivated and can type fast and, you can even follow along to with this fast-paced workshop as we’ll bring all the files you need to download with us on a WiFi-accessible LibraryBox.

We will show you how to install a VirtualBox and Vagrant on Mac OS X, Windows or Linux to and then clone a Vagrantfile from GitHub to setup a local development environment that “That Just Works!”; we call it the “Steve Jobs approach to using Vagrant.” 🙂

Once we have WordPress running locally we’ll show how to access the MySQL database via a MySQL client like SequelPro and how to debug using PhpStorm+XDebug.

And finally we’ll also show how to set a local URL specific for each of your projects, how to deal with any IP address conflicts, how to use the Vagrantfile with your existing WordPress projects, and how even to host multiple local sites via one Vagrant box using a WordPress multi-tenancy approach. And none of that will be difficult to reproduce back home, even for those who paid the least attention in the room!

Once you’ve finished this session we can (almost?) guarantee you’ll never want to go back to Cowboy Coding again!

Suggested Resources:

All of these:
– Install VirtualBox: https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads
– Install Vagrant: https://www.vagrantup.com/downloads.html

Ideally these too:
– Join GitHub: https://github.com/
– Install Git: https://git-scm.com/downloads
– Install WPLib Box: https://github.com/wplib/wplib-box
– Install PhpStorm: https://www.jetbrains.com/phpstorm/download/
– Install SourceTree: https://www.sourcetreeapp.com/download/

Ideally one of these:
– Install Navicat: https://www.navicat.com/products/navicat-for-mysql OR
– Install SequelPro: http://www.sequelpro.com/ OR
– Install HeidiSQL: http://www.heidisql.com/

Speaker

Published by

Mike Schinkel

I previously worked extensively with PHP and WordPress as well as plugins, but I am no longer involved in anything related to WordPress site or plugin development.