From the course: Installing and Running WordPress: Local by FlyWheel

How Local by Flywheel works - WordPress Tutorial

From the course: Installing and Running WordPress: Local by FlyWheel

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How Local by Flywheel works

- [Instructor] LOCAL by Flywheel is a relatively new option in the world of local WordPress hosting. You may have encountered applications like DesktopServer, XAMPP, MAMP, WAMPServer, and Bitnami in the past. Well LOCAL by Flywheel is another branch on that same tree. The name LOCAL by Flywheel also hints at its origins. Flywheel is a hosting company, and LOCAL is a tool offered by Flywheel to make developing sites locally and applying them to Flywheel hosting as easy as possible. That said LOCAL by Flywheel can be used to develop sites for any hosting, you just don't have that convenient one click to deploy option. So how does LOCAL by Flywheel work? And what makes it different from the other options. Well for WordPress to work, it needs an environment with three main components, a database powered by MySQL, a web posting environment, typically Apache or NGINX and php support for server side rendering of code and templates. To set up WordPress on your site, you need all of these three things. And if you use an application like MAMP or WAMPserver, an environment is set up on your computer and you can host as many sites as you like under that environment. LOCAL by Flywheel does things a little bit differently. When you create a new site under LOCAL, you create a container, a virtual computer living inside your computer with its own MySQL, Apache or NGINX, and php setup. That means each site is fully separate and each site can have its own custom hosting configurations. That may sound complicated and on the back end it is which is why LOCAL by Flywheel exists in the first place. Using LOCAL by Flywheel the process of setting up and mainlining these containers is done automatically by the application. All you have to do is say how you want your environment configured and site to function, and the application does the rest.

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