Local Site Development with DDEV
Posted by: Karl Bowers | February 18 2020
After many years of using MAMP for local site development, I decided it was time to explore other options and discovered DDEV.
What is Local Site Development?
Local site development refers to the process of building or testing a website in a private environment, typically offline, before pushing changes live. Here are some key benefits:
- It allows you to develop or test a new or existing site in a controlled, offline environment.
- You can then push those changes to a staging server or directly to the live site when they’re ready.
- This setup helps you debug new features and test functionality before affecting the live site.
- Local environments also allow you to manage version control and log changes to a repository.
Why Switch to DDEV?
Here’s why I made the switch from MAMP to DDEV:
- The latest MAMP (version 5.x) no longer supported PHP 5.x sites.
- This was a problem since many of my clients’ sites were still running on PHP 5.6, particularly with ExpressionEngine.
- Attempting to downgrade MAMP to support these older sites became a nightmare.
- MAMP’s support was slow, and their responses weren’t very helpful.
- It became clear that I needed a better alternative for local development.
- Docker was an option, but it felt overly complex to set up for my needs.
- Then I found DDEV — a simpler and more streamlined solution.
Why DDEV is a Great Alternative
DDEV offers several advantages that make it a strong replacement for MAMP:
- DDEV simplifies the process of setting up Docker, managing all the technical details for you.
- It provides the benefits of Docker without requiring the complex configuration setup.
- However, DDEV only supports PHP 5.6 and above. While that’s a limitation for some older sites, most of my projects were already on PHP 5.6 or higher, making it a great fit moving forward.
- It’s terminal-based, which might be daunting for users who prefer graphical interfaces, but I found it straightforward.
- DDEV has a supportive community and is constantly growing in popularity.
- It’s fast becoming a popular alternative to MAMP for local development.
Moving Forward with DDEV
Since switching to DDEV, here’s how it’s been working out:
- DDEV has been extremely stable, making it a reliable choice for local development.
- It’s also helped me become more comfortable using the macOS terminal (command line) for everyday development tasks.
- Command line tasks can sometimes be slower on macOS, but this doesn’t impact DDEV’s overall performance.
For more insights on DDEV and its advantages over other local development environments, visit the official DDEV documentation.
Additionally, you can explore the following third-party articles to see how DDEV can enhance your development workflow:
- Using DDEV as a Local Development Environment - Smashing Magazine
- Using DDEV for Local Development - SitePoint
- Local Development with DDEV - WebDevOps
Posted by: Karl Bowers
Posted in: ExpressionEngine | Craft CMS | Development
Post Date: February 18 2020
