How do you set up localhost for development?

  • Hi,

    I’m new to PHP development and therefore have a fairly naive question. I realize that setting up a localhost is the preference for WP site owners wanting to do their developing and testing in a non-public area. But, how much of one’s public site must he duplicate onto his localhost? I want to set up my localhost so that I can use a good step-by-step debugger for my PHP, such as XDebug with the Eclipse environment. But, I also realize I can’t duplicate the Loop behavior of my public site without having access to all the content on it. So, do developers usually have to duplicate their whole site onto their localhost setup? Is so, what is the most painless way of doing that? Is one of the backup utilities in CPanel a good way?
    Thanks for any help.

    Vince Deegan

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  • do developers usually have to duplicate their whole site onto their localhost setup?

    I don’t. I simply use a local server to develop themes & test plugins. Personally, I don’t want the hassle of moving a site from a local to a remote server if I can possibly avoid it, so always carry out the actual site development online. In terms of content for testing on my local server, I import the theme unit test data which takes all of 2 minutes.

    Thread Starter vdeegan

    (@vdeegan)

    Thank you Esmi for your answer.
    That actually raises a closely related question. When you do your online development, what kind of PHP debugger do you use? Are you able to install a stepping debugger on the host’s server, or do you use a more simplistic debugging approach? Thanks again.
    Vince

    what kind of PHP debugger do you use

    The site’s/server’s error logs. ??

    You can also try turning debug on and enabling error logging – although I tend to avoid that on a remote server.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
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