A WooCommerce Development Environment is nothing but a collection of tools that enables web development professionals to test their application before they go live. It is essential to create a development environment for seamless website creation and testing.
Whether you're a blogger, or an entrepreneur, you need a well-designed website and you cannot underestimate the significance of having a development environment where you can make changes and modify site features without affecting your live website.
In this blog post we will look into what a development environment is, the two major types and how to get started with both options.
Understanding the WooCommerce Development Environment:
Local Development Environment
To set up a local development environment the infra team needs to set up a server environment directly on the local computer thereby enabling developers to build, test and debug web applications in the local computer before deploying to the live server.
Advantages:
- Speed and Efficiency: Working on a local server removes the need for uploading and downloading code files which results in faster development iterations.
- Offline Accessibility: Developers can also work on their web app development without the need for an internet connection.
- Complete Control: The team has complete control over the server environment such as software configurations, database settings and PHP versions.
Considerations:
- Limited Testing Scope: Local environment is not able to replicate the production server environment which could lead to various compatibility issues when deploying the website.
- Isolation: Also working locally prevents other team members from collaborating. It can be counterproductive for teams that are spread across different locations.
- Resource Intensive: Running a software on the local server environment demands significant system resources which will impact the performance of other applications on the computer.