Several different software packages make it possible to open and run a local server on your computer for you to test website development on.
XAMPP, MAMP, Wamp, and others are available. Most are free but paying unlocks more features. XAMPP has probably been around for longest. New ones include VVV, which somehow is directly related to WordPress.org.
Since I’m running a WordPress website and need something easy to understand and use, I first thought I’d go with Local. Local is somehow directly connected to the WordPress universe. However, it isn’t managed by the same team, and it also relies on synergies with Flywheel.
It seems it doesn’t include an automatic git connection, but the help forum mentions how to connect Localwp and git so that version tracking is complete. The paying version of Local includes MagicSync, which is probably not necessary if I’m using Git and Github correctly.
From what I saw on the features screen, it can even manage, for a single site, the three environments that a website can deploy to:
- the local server (duh, that’s what the software is for)
- the remote staging test server (that’s what came as a good surprise to me)
- and the remote production server (that’s expected, no surprise there).