Running WordPress on your Mac OS X or Windows computer has many advantages. There are two different concepts for doing this:
- Running a virtual private server – VPS – on your Mac or Windows
- Running Apache, PHP and MySQL on your Mac or Windows
Both solutions have its advantages and downsides.
Running PHP, MySQL and Apache on your PC is the easiest and best solution if you are aiming at creating websites. Running a VPS would be the choice if you are developing or programming.
Do you prefer using WP-CLI and WordShell? Then you should choose a VPS based solution.
In TBT we currently use MAMP Pro. In the future, we might also be using VMware Fusion for individual projects. In general, we find MAMP Pro faster because we can use the file manager “Finder” in Mac when moving files and folders between the local disk and WordPress.
Solutions that runs PHP, MySQL, and Apache on your computers OS:
- Manually installing Apache, MySQL, and PHP
- MAMP
- AMPPS Stack
- VirtualHostX version 6
Solutions for running VPS on your computer:
- VirtualHostX version 7
- Primary Vagrant
- Varying-Vagrant-Vagrants
- Oracle VM VirtualBox
- VMware Fusion for MAC
- VMware Workstation for Windows
- Parallels Desktop for Mac
- Microsoft Hyper-V
Manually installing Apache, MySQL, and PHP on Mac and Windows
On both Mac and Windows, you can download Apache, MySQL and PHP and then configure your computer. Mac OS X comes pre-installed natively with Apache and PHP so you only need to install MySQL.
MAMP
Apache, MySQL, and PHP for OS X and Windows
Find the details here:
https://www.mamp.info/en/
AMPPS Stack
AMPPS is a software stack containing Apache, Mysql, PHP. Consist of the Softaculous auto-installer. AMPPS should be used on Desktops and office servers.
http://www.ampps.com
VirtualHostX
VirtualHostX 7.0 lets you host and share as many websites as you like with your Mac. This is a suitable solution when you are creating more than one website simultaneously. With VirtualHostX, you can manage many Apache sites at the same time with just a few clicks.
https://clickontyler.com/virtualhostx/
Primary Vagrant
This is an Apache-based Vagrant configuration for WordPress development.
Primary Vagrant is a tool for WorPress plugin, theme, and core development. You can also use PV as a general PHP development environment. Primary Vagrant is a replacement for MAMP and XAMPP.
Varying Vagrant Vagrants usesNGINX webserver. Primary Vagrant uses Apache. PV uses Puppet instead of Bash. PV uses VVV and Puppet as a base and is more focused on WordPress development.
https://github.com/ChrisWiegman/Primary-Vagrant
Varying-Vagrant-Vagrants/VVV
Vagrant is a VPS server that runs on top of VirtualBox of VMWare on your local machine.
https://varyingvagrantvagrants.org
Oracle VM VirtualBox
https://www.virtualbox.org
VMware Fusion
http://www.vmware.com/products/fusion
VMware Workstation for Windows
https://www.vmware.com/products/workstation
Parallels Desktop for Mac
http://www.parallels.com/eu/products/business/
Microsoft Hyper-V
Microsoft Hyper-V is a part of the Microsoft Windows operating system. You can activate Hyper-V in the Windows 10 Control panel. Choose between creating your own or download prebuilt VPS images with WordPres installed and ready to run.