Local or Remote?

There’s no right or wrong answer to this, just personal preference and what works for your skill/knowledge level.

Personally I work locally to start things off, then move that to a dev/staging server so the client can preview the site, then move that to the live server when it’s all been approved. For me this works better because locally I can do all of the changes and programming without having to upload files all the time.

Michael – thanks …

Like you, I’d prefer to develop locally – but that WP install packet is comprised of a ton of files – so you’re recommending I just move the install files down to my local host, right?

And what about JetPack – I move that down to its local folder as well, right?

And lastly, can you suggest a good source for free WP templates please. Are you satisfied with WP’s themes? Is there a better source?

Thanks.

The only files that you need to move are the files form your theme, plugins and any uploaded files, so pretty much jsut the contents of the /wp-content/ folder. After that transfer the database and that’s it.

Jetpack is just a plugin so that should work the same way, but I don’t use it so I can’t say 100% sure. It should though.

I don’t do free themes. The couple that I’ve found were just terrible. Bad coding was just the start. I’ve found that msot of them set up links back to the free template site without asking, and two of them actively cloaked links to other 3rd party sites that I did not want to be associated with (gambling, pharma and more…) so I will never use a free theme again. I don’t even use commercial themes. They are normally to bloated with features that no one will ever want, but look cool and give it another dot-point for it’s features list. I develop all of my own themes. I do use the base files from the default WP themes as a starting point, but that’s only to get the page structure right, after that everything else is custom.

Ok – thanks much Michael – this helps – greatly appreciate your thoughts.

One more question – have you found any of those default WP themes to have any bad code, cloaked links, etc?

What should be looking for?

No, the default WP themes (TwentyTwelve, TwentyEleven, etc) are very good. There’s nothing hidden or bad in those themes.

What should you be looking for? That’s up to you. Just remember, there’s no such thing as “free”. There’s (almost) always a catch.

Thanks again my friend.