CSS-Tricks on Flywheel

My Flywheel journey began with their Local app, a dedicated tool for WordPress site development. Many developers highly recommend Local, and after extensive use, I've joined their ranks. In fact, I now exclusively use Local for all my local WordPress development. This positive experience led to a sponsored post and, subsequently, migrating all my production sites to Flywheel hosting.

Flywheel is now a sponsor of CSS-Tricks, a partnership I've eagerly anticipated. I've even visited their Omaha office! (Big hello to Jamie, Christi, Karissa, and the entire team!) While the sponsorship includes hosting, I was already a satisfied Flywheel customer on several sites. The recent acquisition by WP Engine further solidifies my confidence, creating a powerful WordPress hosting powerhouse.

Streamlined Local Development

Local has revolutionized my development workflow. Managing WordPress dependencies was always cumbersome; issues would arise unexpectedly, causing significant delays. However, after over a year with Local, I've experienced minimal problems.

Local boasts numerous beneficial features, particularly for larger teams. If you have multiple production sites on Flywheel, onboarding a new team member is effortless. Simply connect Local to Flywheel, download the site, and they're ready to contribute.

Local offers flexibility. You can use it solely for local development or integrate it with Flywheel hosting. The latter is particularly helpful for initial site deployments, but it's entirely optional. I'll elaborate on my workflow below.

Other noteworthy features include:

• Instant Site Creation: Setting up a new site is incredibly fast, guided by a straightforward wizard with smart defaults.
• Simplified HTTPS: Local easily generates and trusts local HTTPS certificates with a single click.
• Live Link Functionality: The "Live Link" feature, powered by ngrok, provides temporary, shareable URLs for your localhost site, ideal for client or colleague previews.
• Database Integration: Directly access your database via Sequel Pro with a single click – far simpler than using web-based tools like phpMyAdmin.

Flywheel's Intuitive Dashboard

I appreciate Local's clean UI, a design philosophy seamlessly integrated into the Flywheel hosting dashboard. The dashboard simplifies numerous tasks:

• SSL Certificates: Effortlessly obtain and manage SSL certificates.
• HTTPS Enforcement: Easily enable or disable HTTPS.
• Multisite Conversion: Convert your site to Multisite with a single button.
• Database Management: Access and manage your database through a built-in UI.
• CDN Integration: Simple CDN toggling.
• Collaboration: Invite collaborators to your sites.
• Backups: Access and manage backups, with options to download or restore.

This simplicity is invaluable, preventing wasted time troubleshooting tools and allowing for focused development.

My Development Workflow

When migrating CSS-Tricks, Flywheel handled the site transfer. My local development process remains unchanged, using Local. However, my deployment workflow required adjustment. While Local can push sites to Flywheel, this method is best suited for initial deployments rather than frequent small changes. Although Local for Teams with MagicSync offers incremental deployments, I prefer a Git-based system where merges to the master branch trigger deployments.

I've long used Beanstalk for Git-based deployment via SFTP. While excellent, Beanstalk's limitation is its self-hosted private Git repositories. Therefore, I created a new private GitHub repository and configured deployment using Buddy, a platform with a user-friendly interface and broader capabilities beyond deployment.

My previous WordPress repository structure included the entire site from the root directory. However, Flywheel locks down core WordPress files, preventing external modifications – a security feature I appreciate. Flywheel manages WordPress updates. Thus, I created a new repository with /wp-content/ as the root.

For consistency, I also migrated DNS to Cloudflare, providing independent DNS management and enhanced security and performance benefits.

My current workflow is: Local > GitHub > Buddy > Flywheel.

Hosting is managed by Cloudflare > Flywheel, with image assets stored on Cloudinary.

Backups are handled by both Flywheel and Jetpack/VaultPress.

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