viewSource

[00:00:00] **Aurooba Ahmed:** You are listening to viewSource, a conversation around tech, web development, and WordPress with hosts: Aurooba Ahmed, that's me and Brian Coords.

[00:00:12] **Brian Coords:** Okay. I have a question for you. Are you ready?

[00:00:14] **Aurooba Ahmed:** I'm ready.

[00:00:15] **Brian Coords:** Okay. Are you running any sort of a MAMP server on your computer at any time in the last like year? Like is there MAMP still running on your computer?

[00:00:30] **Aurooba Ahmed:** No, I don't even think I have it installed anymore.

[00:00:33] **Brian Coords:** No. Do you have any LAMP, MAMP, GLAMP, whatever stacks running, or are you, you, are you past the MAMP era?

[00:00:43] **Aurooba Ahmed:** If I think I'm past that era, way, past that era. You?

[00:00:47] **Brian Coords:** All right? Well, you, you don't need to ask me. I mean, nevermind. Who even asked the stupid question. That's what I want to know. Um, maybe I do , maybe I have MAMP Pro for like [00:01:00] two or three sites that are, you know, I don't even think they're WordPress.

[00:01:05] **Aurooba Ahmed:** Mm-hmm.

[00:01:05] **Brian Coords:** Just, you know, some old things, you know?

[00:01:08] **Aurooba Ahmed:** Yeah.

[00:01:08] **Brian Coords:** You just have old things and you know you're gonna have to load it up every once in a while and you don't, what am I gonna do?

[00:01:14] **Brian Coords:** Sit here and like re-set up a local environment for something that I started five years ago? I mean,

[00:01:21] **Aurooba Ahmed:** yeah, that's fair.

[00:01:23] **Brian Coords:** I'm sorry,

[00:01:24] **Aurooba Ahmed:** I don't even think I ever bought pro.

[00:01:26] **Brian Coords:** No? I feel really bad.

[00:01:29] **Aurooba Ahmed:** No, never.

[00:01:30] **Brian Coords:** If they're still like, I assume they're still going strong cuz I, I definitely have MAMP pro and it definitely updates once in a while and it actually is really, I'm not gonna lie, it's actually really nice.

[00:01:38] **Brian Coords:** Like, it, it gets it like it's a sturdy old workhorse. So I,

[00:01:43] **Aurooba Ahmed:** right.

[00:01:43] **Brian Coords:** Let's step back and say our topic is local environments for WordPress.

[00:01:48] **Aurooba Ahmed:** Yes.

[00:01:49] **Brian Coords:** Are we saying for WordPress?

[00:01:52] **Aurooba Ahmed:** I guess so, um, to begin with anyway, but we could segue into non-WordPress if you want.

[00:01:59] **Brian Coords:** Mm. We'll see. [00:02:00] We'll see how crazy we get. Um, so I guess take me back in time.

[00:02:06] **Brian Coords:** What do you think, if you can remember, what was your first local environment for like building your very first WordPress website? You know, when you made that move from cowboy coding on a server to, I'm gonna set up a local site. What do you think you used, if you remember?

[00:02:25] **Aurooba Ahmed:** I definitely remember it was absolutely MAMP cuz I had just moved to a Mac and I was like, server coding is BS.

[00:02:35] **Aurooba Ahmed:** I don't wanna do this anymore. And I was like in my teens and not even doing this professionally yet. And yeah, I think it was like core, like I think. the Docs said use MAMP. So I downloaded MAMP and I followed their instructions and they made no sense. But I used that forever, I think for a very, very long time.

[00:02:57] **Aurooba Ahmed:** I used MAMP. What about [00:03:00] you? Was there something before MAMP?

[00:03:01] **Brian Coords:** Well, I, as you were talking, I remembered that I had one before that was called XAMP. It's like MAMP with an X at the beginning. Does that sound familiar?

[00:03:13] **Aurooba Ahmed:** But I thought that was just for Windows.

[00:03:17] **Aurooba Ahmed:** No. Am I wrong?

[00:03:18] **Brian Coords:** No, I think, no. It says here that it was available on Mac OS 10.

[00:03:24] **Aurooba Ahmed:** Oh,

[00:03:25] **Brian Coords:** I'm pretty sure.

[00:03:26] **Aurooba Ahmed:** Okay.

[00:03:26] **Brian Coords:** Yeah, I'm pretty sure it was on a Mac. You know, that's a good question.

[00:03:29] **Aurooba Ahmed:** Hmm.

[00:03:30] **Brian Coords:** See,

[00:03:30] **Aurooba Ahmed:** Yeah, okay.

[00:03:31] **Brian Coords:** The problem with these sorts of topics is my memory is pretty bad. So whatever I'm saying, assume like I'm 50% incorrect about it, but

[00:03:39] **Aurooba Ahmed:** yeah, maybe we'll go back and correct it in the show notes. Who knows?

[00:03:42] **Brian Coords:** Yeah. Everyone's like, we did some sleuthing and we know you were not on XAMP at that year. because of this. um, I think my first one to answer my own question, I think was desktop server ServerPress. Did you use Desktop server?

[00:03:58] **Aurooba Ahmed:** Mm, [00:04:00] I did. I tried it because a lot of people raved about it and I wanted to know if it was easier to switch from one installation to another installation with it, which it was, but I don't think I ever stuck with it. Yeah,

[00:04:14] **Brian Coords:** it was, um, this is where I'll show my ignorance, but it's basically, it was basically like a MAMP, but it was really just Windows. It was like, or Windows, sorry.

[00:04:25] **Aurooba Ahmed:** Mm-hmm.

[00:04:25] **Brian Coords:** It was really just WordPress. It was like,

[00:04:27] **Aurooba Ahmed:** right.

[00:04:27] **Brian Coords:** We're, we're only really for WordPress sites, whereas like XAMP and MAMP, I know that I've used those for like non WordPress sites.

[00:04:35] **Brian Coords:** I've used 'em for like, I don't know, you know, CodeIgniter or whatever random framework that you get roped into. Um, but I remember desktops over being like, we're like, I think they're kinda like the OGs, right? Like they're the original,

[00:04:48] **Aurooba Ahmed:** I think so

[00:04:49] **Brian Coords:** kind of like local environment for WordPress. And I'm guessing you saw

[00:04:52] **Aurooba Ahmed:** yeah.

[00:04:53] **Brian Coords:** That they're not quite as active or they're shutting down. .

[00:04:57] **Aurooba Ahmed:** So I think I started, I, I tried [00:05:00] it right before they decided to shut it down because they got sold or something. And then I was like, oh, well this was really cool and now it's gone. And then the new boy, new person, new thing, new program.

[00:05:13] **Brian Coords:** Mm-hmm.

[00:05:14] **Aurooba Ahmed:** on the market showed up.

[00:05:15] **Brian Coords:** You don't even have to say it. We all know who it is.

[00:05:17] **Aurooba Ahmed:** Yeah. We all know it's .

[00:05:19] **Brian Coords:** You're talking about Lando from Pantheon. I'm just kidding. . .

[00:05:24] **Aurooba Ahmed:** I was just like, No! It was Local by Flywheel.

[00:05:30] **Brian Coords:** Yeah. Can you explain to me like I'm five the difference between desktop server and the MAMP era and like Local and I guess that's like the Docker era, like do you think If I didn't understand the difference, but I, I clearly do. I'm

[00:05:48] **Aurooba Ahmed:** mm-hmm.

[00:05:49] **Brian Coords:** clearly I understand. Very intelligent,

[00:05:51] **Aurooba Ahmed:** of course.

[00:05:51] **Brian Coords:** Understand it all.

[00:05:52] **Aurooba Ahmed:** Oh yeah.

[00:05:52] **Brian Coords:** Um, How would you frame the difference between the old school MAMP stack and then like now where I think we all live, which is somewhere in the Docker [00:06:00] universe, including Local.

[00:06:01] **Aurooba Ahmed:** Mm-hmm.

[00:06:02] **Brian Coords:** which I think we should spend a lot of time talking about.

[00:06:06] **Aurooba Ahmed:** I think the biggest difference is virtualization, right? Um, I think that I could be totally wrong by the way, but like, I think MAMP and, uh, desktop server did not run as like a virtual environment and instead just use the technologies that were on your computer to create a server. Um, whereas, Local and everything else that came after uses basically like say Virtual Box for example, and uh, to virtualize, or in this case Docker, but you know, you can use Virtual Box to do it too.

[00:06:41] **Aurooba Ahmed:** And Local did for a while, um, in order to make a virtual environment that was completely separate from your computer and running on top in like in its own isolated OS and that's where you ran the WordPress , right? I think that's what it was.

[00:06:55] **Brian Coords:** I think that's the, a good way to explain it because what I remember is the [00:07:00] very first time I tried like a Docker set up for like a WordPress site, what scared me the most was I didn't know where anything was as much, where it felt like with the old MAMP it was like, there's my file structure, I'm looking right at it.

[00:07:15] **Brian Coords:** Like I kind of knew everything was. . I think one of the first times I did like a, a docker style setup, I erased a site or a database and I had, I just didn't understand where did it go, where I still don't know where it is. Is it still there somewhere hiding? How did I delete it? And, you know, it's been a long time since then, but like

[00:07:33] **Aurooba Ahmed:** mm-hmm.

[00:07:34] **Brian Coords:** if, if I were to ask you, honestly, when's the last time you accidentally erased your database or, or lost a site in like your local environment where you were just like, I think it's gone.

[00:07:45] **Aurooba Ahmed:** Yeah. I think it was with, um, Ooh. Vagrant.

[00:07:50] **Brian Coords:** Mm-hmm.

[00:07:50] **Aurooba Ahmed:** Vagrant is one that we didn't have in our list, but when VVV it was like very something vagrant.

[00:07:57] **Aurooba Ahmed:** Anyway, you could use it as an environment in Docker to [00:08:00] run WordPress. The first time I tried that, I think I had migrated a site over that I was working on, and yeah, it went poof, and I was like, I don't know. I'm, I'm freaked. I never want to use Docker again. This is traumatic. Oh my goodness. I still remember that very clearly.

[00:08:13] **Aurooba Ahmed:** It was very terrifying.

[00:08:15] **Brian Coords:** I think that's why Local WP is, I'm just gonna say it, the most popular probably, um, local environment for WordPress developers. Um, because I think it makes you feel like warm and cozy. Like you're in your old desktop server MAMP with your nice UI and you know, you're not running commands and you're not, you know, spinning things up.

[00:08:40] **Brian Coords:** You're just, you're just safe in your little application that you trust. Even though under the hood it's essentially doing the same thing. Um, just, you know, more securely. So I, I'm gonna,

[00:08:52] **Aurooba Ahmed:** plus the file structure is right there. Right.

[00:08:54] **Brian Coords:** Yes.

[00:08:54] **Aurooba Ahmed:** It's not in a woowoo land. It's right there.

[00:08:56] **Brian Coords:** Yes.

[00:08:57] **Aurooba Ahmed:** You can access it even if local isn't running[00:09:00]

[00:09:00] **Brian Coords:** Yes. And so that's been a recent and well, and then we could talk about it, has WP CLI built in, which I

[00:09:07] **Aurooba Ahmed:** mm-hmm.

[00:09:07] **Brian Coords:** love using. Um, it has

[00:09:09] **Aurooba Ahmed:** same,

[00:09:10] **Brian Coords:** it has, uh, mail hog built in, which I do take a lot of advantage of. Um,

[00:09:17] **Aurooba Ahmed:** an image optimizer and a link checker.

[00:09:20] **Brian Coords:** Do you use those?

[00:09:22] **Aurooba Ahmed:** I've used the link checker actually works pretty well. The image amazon com optimizer never.

[00:09:26] **Brian Coords:** I mean, I'm not pushing my images back up. I'm not pulling images from my site and pushing it back up. I mean, I got plug-ins for that. Don't even, don't even exactly ask me to do that. They, they. Now I'll just because I don't have anyone else to complain about this, to, I'm gonna put this up this to you and you tell me what you think.

[00:09:45] **Brian Coords:** My one complaint about local WP is I wanna pull a website down and I do not wanna pull the media library down. I just don't wanna do it on the first pull and

[00:09:56] **Aurooba Ahmed:** mm-hmm.

[00:09:56] **Brian Coords:** with local WP. I guess [00:10:00] I could download a backup of my site and manually like install it.

[00:10:04] **Aurooba Ahmed:** Yeah.

[00:10:04] **Brian Coords:** And not include it and do that whole like song and dance.

[00:10:07] **Brian Coords:** But it's so cool the way it connects WP Engine, it pulls the whole site down. Everything's right there, it's ready to go. But like, you know, with some crazy clients that have these massive media libraries.

[00:10:18] **Aurooba Ahmed:** Yeah.

[00:10:18] **Brian Coords:** I just wanna be able to say, just don't gimme the media library. Like I'll, I'll do some magic to load the images.

[00:10:24] **Brian Coords:** Don't worry about that. I don't want their images on my. Am I crazy? Is that a valid complaint? Is there an easy solution that you, the genius know that I clearly don't.

[00:10:34] **Aurooba Ahmed:** Genius.

[00:10:35] **Aurooba Ahmed:** You're not crazy. I think that, this is a really valid complaint. And I think in general, just that, that that component of local is just not well developed or it's not like it's very rudimentary, you know, like they haven't like tried to make it better or improve it in any way.

[00:10:52] **Aurooba Ahmed:** It's just like a basic connection. And don't even get me started on the fact that when you wanna like, push stuff up or pull back stuff down and it's [00:11:00] like it takes forever for the file, uh, system to load. And then you have to like, Trying to find anything in that. Like,

[00:11:06] **Brian Coords:** and collapsing all your folders.

[00:11:08] **Aurooba Ahmed:** Yeah. Yes. I hate that so much. Oh my goodness. It drives me insane. Um, and like the fact that it never saves your preferences. There's no way to say, I never want to sync the database. Thank you very much. Never, ever, um, or I only wanna sync this particular file or this particular folder. I wanna be able to do that, but I can't.

[00:11:29] **Aurooba Ahmed:** So that means I personally just don't use it. I, I prefer to just use like Git with WP Engine.

[00:11:37] **Brian Coords:** Mm-hmm.

[00:11:38] **Aurooba Ahmed:** instead, and I will not pull, I will not push because that thing that, that setup is good for like maybe the initial one. And then after that I just find it to be a painful, painful process.

[00:11:49] **Brian Coords:** Oh, you don't even use the pull, like, I like to pull from WP Engine and then I like to never push.

[00:11:55] **Brian Coords:** That's my like, mantra is like never push from in local. [00:12:00]

[00:12:00] **Aurooba Ahmed:** I pull sometimes, like if I want the database updates because I want to test with the latest content from the client or something. Yeah. Then I'll pull sometimes, but only for the database. And only

[00:12:10] **Brian Coords:** only for the database

[00:12:11] **Aurooba Ahmed:** because,

[00:12:12] **Brian Coords:** and you gotta wait 10 minutes for it to load all the files that you know you don't want.

[00:12:15] **Brian Coords:** Yeah.

[00:12:16] **Aurooba Ahmed:** At least. Yeah, exactly. Uh, sometimes it even takes longer and I like, like, why, why? Anyway,

[00:12:23] **Brian Coords:** but this is, this is a tangent. WP Engine purchased Local or they purchased Flywheel who created Local. And then there used to be a premium version of Local, which I gladly paid for cuz I thought it was worth it and they made that free, which is very nice.

[00:12:40] **Aurooba Ahmed:** Yeah.

[00:12:41] **Brian Coords:** Um, and, it's still very good. But I know that there's like a place where people say like, here's features that we would like to see. And then I think that place, I think it has a direct like connection to their trashcan cuz I don't see any, you know, responses to those. And I wonder like, [00:13:00] again, WP Engine, my favorite hosting company sponsor the podcast, , they, you know,

[00:13:06] **Aurooba Ahmed:** yeah.

[00:13:06] **Brian Coords:** They own a lot of really good things that we all like and some of them, have stagnated a little bit, do you think?

[00:13:15] **Aurooba Ahmed:** Yes.

[00:13:15] **Brian Coords:** Do you feel like Local stagnates a little, has stagnated a little bit since they bought it? I mean, it's like, it's good. I don't have no complaints, but it doesn't feel you've changed much.

[00:13:25] **Aurooba Ahmed:** Yeah. I'm going to open up the change log because I really want to know now like what have been the, because you know, once in a while you will see the updates.

[00:13:33] **Brian Coords:** Yeah.

[00:13:33] **Aurooba Ahmed:** What has changed? They added a on/off toggle. Oh. The fact that they've removed multisite support and then never brought it back will is so maddening because I still have one or two sites that I need multisite on, and you can totally make it work, but it's like a whole like I don't even know, but

[00:13:52] **Brian Coords:** you can make it work? I didn't know you could.

[00:13:53] **Aurooba Ahmed:** You can, you can make it work. Um, I totally did, but it is very annoying to [00:14:00] make it work. Um,

[00:14:03] **Brian Coords:** I feel like they did.

[00:14:04] **Aurooba Ahmed:** Yeah. So they've done some like silicon, like they supported Apple silicon.

[00:14:08] **Brian Coords:** Yeah. That's the one. That's a good one. I mean, that's an important one.

[00:14:12] **Aurooba Ahmed:** Yeah.

[00:14:12] **Brian Coords:** That, wait, that brings me back to issue Desktop server. And the reason I stopped using it.

[00:14:18] **Aurooba Ahmed:** Yes.

[00:14:18] **Brian Coords:** Which was that there was like, I don't remember which Mac was the big update, but there was one that was like a pretty big one. Maybe it was like when they switched the like not allowing 32 bit apps or like one of those things.

[00:14:30] **Aurooba Ahmed:** Yeah,

[00:14:31] **Brian Coords:** one of those big OS updates, think and Desktop server was just like not fast enough. And uh,

[00:14:36] **Aurooba Ahmed:** yeah,

[00:14:36] **Brian Coords:** it was like, well for a month you can't use your local sites if you updated too soon. And so that was when I was like, I just, I had to, I had to let it go cuz like I needed, I needed to get my local sites back up and running.

[00:14:47] **Brian Coords:** So, sorry, desktop,

[00:14:48] **Aurooba Ahmed:** Yeah, I hear ya. That's me and Adobe Creative Cloud right now because they take a little while to like bring support for their creative cloud apps to the whatever the latest OS is. And so [00:15:00] I'm still on OS 12 and not on Ventura 13 because I was waiting for Photoshop to like be okay on that so that I don't like lose access to the stuff that I really need access to.

[00:15:11] **Aurooba Ahmed:** And I really hate that. I actually don't like my dependence on Creative Cloud and I may change over. That can probably be a whole episode too.

[00:15:20] **Brian Coords:** Yeah. I mean a whole episode about Creative Cloud, Figma. Um,

[00:15:26] **Aurooba Ahmed:** yes.

[00:15:26] **Brian Coords:** Some of their other choices recently.

[00:15:29] **Aurooba Ahmed:** Mm-hmm.

[00:15:30] **Brian Coords:** We'll let that one go.

[00:15:31] **Aurooba Ahmed:** Mm-hmm.

[00:15:32] **Brian Coords:** I feel like,

[00:15:33] **Aurooba Ahmed:** yeah.

[00:15:33] **Brian Coords:** For the interest of time, we should move past local WP and do quick highlight round of some other ones.

[00:15:40] **Brian Coords:** Um, I. , I'll ask you if you've used the, the WordPress, um, WordPress environment. The, like Docker. I never know how to

[00:15:51] **Aurooba Ahmed:** Yeah.

[00:15:51] **Brian Coords:** How to like, say these things out loud from the block editor cuz it's always like

[00:15:55] **Aurooba Ahmed:** wordpress-env

[00:15:55] **Brian Coords:** and WordPress slash Yeah. And like,

[00:15:59] **Aurooba Ahmed:** yeah,

[00:15:59] **Brian Coords:** this [00:16:00] is a thing that. So to step back when you look up the documentation, as we learn today for setting up a local server, WordPress still points you towards desktop server, which has been shut down for I think at least a year.

[00:16:11] **Brian Coords:** Yep. Um, yeah. And it's actually very hard to find out that WordPress has its own decent, like Docker environment for setting up your WordPress sites.

[00:16:20] **Aurooba Ahmed:** Mm-hmm.

[00:16:21] **Brian Coords:** have you used it?

[00:16:23] **Aurooba Ahmed:** I have used it. I prefer not to use it, not because it's not bad, not good. It's just that Local is so much more convenient. Like, I'm sorry, but like I, I want the convenience.

[00:16:34] **Aurooba Ahmed:** I want that like sort of visual feedback that just makes it easier for me to switch from one context to another, so I prefer it. Yeah. The WordPress documentation has really bad SEO. I'm just gonna put that out there.

[00:16:51] **Brian Coords:** Well, I, I think it's because the WordPress environment documentation lives inside the package [00:17:00] reference of the reference guide section of the Block Editor handbook.

[00:17:04] **Brian Coords:** And to me it's like,

[00:17:05] **Aurooba Ahmed:** yes,

[00:17:06] **Brian Coords:** I guess I get that it's a package and I guess they're working on it in Gutenberg as

[00:17:12] **Aurooba Ahmed:** mm-hmm.

[00:17:13] **Brian Coords:** a feature. But like why is it in the block handbook?

[00:17:18] **Aurooba Ahmed:** Why is it there?

[00:17:19] **Brian Coords:** Yeah.

[00:17:20] **Aurooba Ahmed:** and they don't link to it from they, I mean I'm sure they do, but it's linked to very, in very few places from within the other parts of wordpress.org, which means that, you know, a search engine just doesn't know enough or to recommend it to you.

[00:17:35] **Brian Coords:** Mm-hmm.

[00:17:35] **Aurooba Ahmed:** as like one of the top results. So yeah, I think a lot of people probably don't even know this exists.

[00:17:42] **Brian Coords:** Yeah,

[00:17:42] **Aurooba Ahmed:** it's a hundred percent.

[00:17:43] **Brian Coords:** That's how I feel. And then don't even get me started on the CSS of the Developer Resources Block Editor Handbook with its insane margins, the content is this narrow.

[00:17:57] **Brian Coords:** There's a sidebar table of contents, [00:18:00] and then no table of contents for this thousand word article that I gotta scroll down.

[00:18:05] **Aurooba Ahmed:** Yes.

[00:18:07] **Brian Coords:** You know, I don't,

[00:18:08] **Aurooba Ahmed:** the narrowness is good. I think the narrow content width is actually good. in general just like, scientifically for like digesting and reading content, but the fact that you have to scroll so long and, oh, if you, if you open up the one side, like the table of contents and it becomes super long, then try to find anything in that is like a super painful process.

[00:18:27] **Aurooba Ahmed:** I mean, it was a good thought and now it needs improvement, but I don't think that the community has the resources to make that happen, that's part of the other problem, like with that in general, like I could talk a lot about like just resources for the documentation aspect,

[00:18:43] **Brian Coords:** but the PHP documentation, this has nothing to do with local environments.

[00:18:47] **Brian Coords:** The PHP documentation is really good and it keeps getting better. This year they launched, um,

[00:18:53] **Aurooba Ahmed:** yeah,

[00:18:53] **Brian Coords:** where the code is like way more like syntax highlighted and stuff, and the

[00:18:58] **Aurooba Ahmed:** mm-hmm.

[00:18:58] **Brian Coords:** and so like the PHP developer documentation [00:19:00] continues to be better. It shows you exactly where in the core, the function is what functions use the function.

[00:19:06] **Aurooba Ahmed:** Yeah.

[00:19:06] **Brian Coords:** Like I use that stuff regularly. Like it's good.

[00:19:09] **Aurooba Ahmed:** Well, the developer docs are okay for WordPress. They, they do all of that.

[00:19:13] **Brian Coords:** Yeah.

[00:19:13] **Aurooba Ahmed:** But the the block editor stuff though, in this new paradigm of using git to do it through GitHub is the design is just weird. I get it. I agree.

[00:19:27] **Brian Coords:** Hey, we're running outta time.

[00:19:29] **Aurooba Ahmed:** One of the other ones. Yeah.

[00:19:30] **Brian Coords:** Yeah. Gimme another one.

[00:19:31] **Aurooba Ahmed:** DevKit. DevKit. Did you ever use DevKit from Kinsta?

[00:19:36] **Brian Coords:** Is there wait, wait. There's Kinsta and there's WP Engine.

[00:19:41] **Aurooba Ahmed:** Yes.

[00:19:42] **Brian Coords:** Right. And there's dev kit.

[00:19:43] **Aurooba Ahmed:** Yeah.

[00:19:44] **Brian Coords:** Was WP Engine,

[00:19:46] **Aurooba Ahmed:** oh, sorry. DevKinsta. Yeah. DevKit was WP Engine and DevKinsta is Kinsta, that's right.

[00:19:52] **Brian Coords:** Yes,

[00:19:52] **Aurooba Ahmed:** that's right.

[00:19:53] **Brian Coords:** No, I've, I'm not like, I've never used Kinsta, I honestly didn't know who they [00:20:00] were until like a year ago where it was said like, Tell me if I'm wrong. I thought Kinsta created basically like a CMS type thing on top of WordPress. That was like a much better content. C like kin, like hosting blogs on Kinsta.

[00:20:17] **Brian Coords:** Like they had like a network of blogs or something.

[00:20:20] **Aurooba Ahmed:** If they did at some point. I don't know about that.

[00:20:23] **Brian Coords:** Right.

[00:20:23] **Aurooba Ahmed:** I know nothing about that. But they have a really nice management setup. Like how WP Engine, like, you know, you can manage your sites.

[00:20:30] **Brian Coords:** Okay. Okay.

[00:20:31] **Aurooba Ahmed:** It has more of the Flywheel vibe, Flywheel vibe. when you go in and it's a nice setup, like the actual, like management of your sites and the DNS and everything in there is really nice, really well designed, really sleek.

[00:20:43] **Aurooba Ahmed:** Um Okay. Especially when you compare to WP Engine, which is very functional, very awesome, but not necessarily the sleekest looking thing. Um, maybe that's what you're thinking of. Cuz they were really hyped up about that for good reason.

[00:20:58] **Brian Coords:** Yeah. See, now I'm wondering who I was [00:21:00] thinking of. I thought Kinsta, like a lot of content companies I thought were using Kinsta.

[00:21:04] **Brian Coords:** Like I thought Kinsta was like really geared towards like lots of content, but I,

[00:21:11] **Aurooba Ahmed:** yes,

[00:21:11] **Brian Coords:** like in terms of their marketing,

[00:21:12] **Aurooba Ahmed:** they optimize for that.

[00:21:14] **Brian Coords:** Yeah.

[00:21:15] **Aurooba Ahmed:** Yeah. Okay. Because they like have everything like CDN and everything.

[00:21:18] **Brian Coords:** I, for some reason, thought they even had like some, you know, like, um, like if you use Siteground, Siteground now has like plugins where like when you log into the back end of a siteground site, it's like you don't need, which I, I kind of like that they do this.

[00:21:30] **Brian Coords:** You don't need any caching plug-ins and you don't need a, like, they have like, you can do so much in your WordPress site that actually changes things where, like WP Engine, if I wanna like do some things. I gotta sit in a support chat queue and ask somebody

[00:21:45] **Aurooba Ahmed:** yeah,

[00:21:45] **Brian Coords:** in Austin to, you know, freaking add a cache exclusion for me. So I do

[00:21:51] **Aurooba Ahmed:** pay more, but yeah.

[00:21:53] **Brian Coords:** Wait, since when I don't believe you.

[00:21:55] **Aurooba Ahmed:** Yeah, you could do it. . No, it's there. I promise.

[00:21:58] **Brian Coords:** I don't believe you.

[00:21:59] **Aurooba Ahmed:** You could ask them to [00:22:00] make that available to you, and then it's there in the side. You can do it.

[00:22:04] **Brian Coords:** So I ask them, you, you,

[00:22:05] **Aurooba Ahmed:** there is a step, but like one step instead of every time step.

[00:22:08] **Brian Coords:** Yeah. So to answer your question, no, I never used DevKinsta Explain to me, uh, was it,

[00:22:17] **Aurooba Ahmed:** it's the same as local, but it's way slower and way worse. Okay.

[00:22:20] **Brian Coords:** But it like a ui, like a, it was like an app just like. Yeah.

[00:22:26] **Aurooba Ahmed:** Okay. Yeah. Lando is a command line tool, right?

[00:22:30] **Brian Coords:** Yes. Lando, I believe Pantheon, that was like their recommended one.

[00:22:34] **Brian Coords:** So if you

[00:22:35] **Aurooba Ahmed:** mm-hmm,

[00:22:36] **Brian Coords:** were dealing with clients Pantheon, um, that could be a whole, we should do a whole episode just on like the weirdness of different hosting companies and how they do things like hosting a site on Pantheon.

[00:22:47] **Aurooba Ahmed:** Yeah.

[00:22:47] **Brian Coords:** Is not like hosting a site on WP Engine or you know, that sort of thing. It's just meant for a whole different type of website, you know,

[00:22:55] **Aurooba Ahmed:** site. Yeah. I think I've only ever had three [00:23:00] clients on Pantheon ever. And they definitely need, didn't need to be using Pantheon, but

[00:23:04] **Brian Coords:** Yeah.

[00:23:05] **Aurooba Ahmed:** Yeah. .

[00:23:06] **Brian Coords:** So

[00:23:07] **Aurooba Ahmed:** is there anything else.

[00:23:09] **Brian Coords:** Mm. There's ones, I mean, we could keep going on the list of things I haven't used. Um, you know, there's like the Kana, Kana by Chris Wegman, which I want to use but haven't used.

[00:23:21] **Aurooba Ahmed:** Yep.

[00:23:22] **Aurooba Ahmed:** Um, same. I wanna try it too.

[00:23:25] **Brian Coords:** There's, um, , there's, you know, a WordPress playground where you're just hosting your WordPress website in your browser, in your web assembly. I mean, it's not really a local site, but

[00:23:36] **Aurooba Ahmed:** Right.

[00:23:37] **Brian Coords:** It's gonna,

[00:23:38] **Aurooba Ahmed:** yeah.

[00:23:38] **Aurooba Ahmed:** I think it's gonna,

[00:23:38] **Aurooba Ahmed:** I guess you could do that with InstaWP too. Have you tried that?

[00:23:41] **Brian Coords:** Oh, but

[00:23:41] **Aurooba Ahmed:** you can just like spin up an instance.

[00:23:44] **Brian Coords:** Yeah. I actually have tried that. That is super cool. That is.

[00:23:47] **Aurooba Ahmed:** Mm-hmm.

[00:23:48] **Brian Coords:** not solving the same problem, like in any way at all.

[00:23:51] **Aurooba Ahmed:** Yeah.

[00:23:51] **Brian Coords:** But it is. Like it feels, it's like a classic WordPress thing. Everybody does one thing really well [00:24:00] and you can't really connect all of them.

[00:24:02] **Brian Coords:** But one day in the future

[00:24:04] **Aurooba Ahmed:** mm-hmm.

[00:24:05] **Brian Coords:** spinning up an InstaWP, throwing it to like my local hosting it on WP Engine, like I feel like one day, like

[00:24:13] **Aurooba Ahmed:** it'll be possible.

[00:24:16] **Brian Coords:** Yeah,

[00:24:17] **Aurooba Ahmed:** maybe. Yeah, that would be nice. Maybe we need like an ActivityPub, kind of like spec, but for WordPress where everything can talk to each other.

[00:24:25] **Brian Coords:** Yeah, which goes also against my other opinion, which is I probably don't need a giant WordPress, like any, like, I probably don't even need a CMS for like half of the stuff , but, uh,

[00:24:36] **Aurooba Ahmed:** that's true.

[00:24:37] **Brian Coords:** That's, that's another conversation. All right, so wrapping it up, we're all. We're all just carrying water for LocalWP, right?

[00:24:44] **Brian Coords:** I mean,

[00:24:45] **Aurooba Ahmed:** yes.

[00:24:45] **Brian Coords:** Let's be honest, LocalWP that's, I think

[00:24:48] **Aurooba Ahmed:** It's excellent.

[00:24:49] **Brian Coords:** They've won the war, you know, they could use a, a new feature now

[00:24:52] **Aurooba Ahmed:** they're too comfortable. Yeah.

[00:24:54] **Brian Coords:** Oh yeah. They're ready to be disrupted.

[00:24:56] **Aurooba Ahmed:** Yeah. They are ready to be disrupted unless they disrupt [00:25:00] themselves. I think I heard on the Vine, like last year, that they were looking to hire someone who would like be more Local focused cuz they don't have anyone who is like focused on Local, within the team.

[00:25:12] **Brian Coords:** Mm-hmm.

[00:25:13] **Aurooba Ahmed:** I don't know if that ever happened or if I'm just totally making it up, but it would be really nice to see them pay a little bit more than just let's maintain this thing as it is kind of attention to Local.

[00:25:25] **Brian Coords:** Well, I mean, you imagine you're talking about Docker and like virtual environments. You're talking about a, an electron app that

[00:25:32] **Aurooba Ahmed:** mm-hmm.

[00:25:32] **Brian Coords:** basically has to do some like native, uh, desktop functionality for like macOS.

[00:25:38] **Aurooba Ahmed:** Yeah.

[00:25:38] **Brian Coords:** You have to understand WordPress like it's,

[00:25:41] **Aurooba Ahmed:** yeah.

[00:25:42] **Brian Coords:** there's no way that I would

[00:25:43] **Aurooba Ahmed:** complicated

[00:25:44] **Brian Coords:** understand 5% of what's happening when I look at Local, like I, it's just, it's,

[00:25:49] **Aurooba Ahmed:** yeah,

[00:25:49] **Brian Coords:** it's a lot. For sure. I can see that.

[00:25:51] **Aurooba Ahmed:** That's true. Yeah. I agree. But I mean, I think considering how much, how much support I think it has in the WordPress community, if they put more [00:26:00] resources towards it or even monetize some aspect of it or something like, I can see that being like a good thing for them too, to put more attention on it.

[00:26:08] **Aurooba Ahmed:** I just wish that they would.

[00:26:10] **Brian Coords:** Yeah, I mean if they wanna bring back the payments for Local Pro to like get that, give that media upload file filtering, pulling and pulling, pushing stuff.

[00:26:21] **Aurooba Ahmed:** Yes.

[00:26:21] **Brian Coords:** Cleared up. I'll chip in 10 bucks a year. Yeah. For that

[00:26:25] **Aurooba Ahmed:** a year? 10 bucks a year. Oh, no.

[00:26:29] **Brian Coords:** Can I, can they offer a life, a lifetime, uh, license?

[00:26:33] **Aurooba Ahmed:** Yes.

[00:26:34] **Brian Coords:** Since, uh, since they're in the lifetime license business now. Yeah.

[00:26:37] **Aurooba Ahmed:** Yes. Well, I mean, I'm okay with like, Local having won the war, as long as they keep, not innovating, but just, you know, just help remove some of the pains that are still here.

[00:26:51] **Brian Coords:** Yeah, so you hear that Local. We're ending our podcast saying You're the best.

[00:26:57] **Brian Coords:** Please make improvements. Please sponsor our [00:27:00] podcast. Anything else?

[00:27:01] **Aurooba Ahmed:** Yes, all of the above.

[00:27:02] **Brian Coords:** All of the above. No. All right.

[00:27:03] **Aurooba Ahmed:** We love you.

[00:27:04] **Brian Coords:** All right, , I'll talk. Talk to you later.

[00:27:06] **Aurooba Ahmed:** Talk to you later.

[00:27:10] **Brian Coords:** Visit viewsource.fm for the latest updates and links to the show notes. Review and subscribe to viewSource in iTunes, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.