Any news on a WORKING install? (Communication is awful)

Support
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Can we please have a version of LbF without any new features, updated whatever component, but JUST fixing all problems that are reported here for most normal installs?

There’s no news on this, no blog post, no announcement, just nothing. In short: the LbF communication is far below par.

LbF team: please get back to the basics and supply a working install, without bells and whistles.

And ONLY add those bells and whistles after a thorough, I mean thorough (did I say thorough?) test by testers that are willing to take the risk.

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Hey @frizzel77 –

As I’m sure a developer of your caliber is aware of – technology doesn’t stand still. So while Local would love to not cause problems, the fact of the matter is that the computers and operating systems are quite varied and it’s through these edge cases that Local becomes a better product.

We’d love for you to help make the community a better place as well as be a force of positive change here. Let us know how we can help facilitate you being a helpful part of the community!

– Ben

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Ben -

Respectfully, this is an unhelpful and empty response. I understand you are attempting to protect the LbF dev’s here, but the fact is, “edge cases” is certainly not the case here. I don’t know how many people are currently using - or attempting to - LbF, but with the number of issues posted here, almost continuously, it seems something must change in order to keep LbF alive. Since, as frizzel77 mentions, the communication is nearly non-existent here, it would behoove Flywheel to put more resources on it. The potential for LbF is so huge, but since I have been using it on and off for well over a year now, I find it unusable more often than not.

As I stated in an earlier post, Flywheel is an exceptional host - the best I have found for WP. It is unfortunate that people are stating here that they would not trust Flywheel for hosting their sites because LbF is so buggy.

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If I can take a position here…
I’ve been using Local for almost a year and half, and yes, I’ve run into trouble with the app, but the thing is: This doesn’t get way far from similar products like WAMP, MAMP, XAMP, etc. All of those bring problems just as much.
Local is a more complex product then those, in an attempt (that in my opinion is well achieved) to facilitate the specific Wordpress development dealing with environments, and that’s what makes Local different from the others.

The problems I had with Local, are directly comparable with the problems I had with the other similar products, and the solutions were comparable too, but with different matters. In the end I went further with Local than with any of the similars. And sincerely, we as experienced developers can solve most issues just as we solve issues on live servers and all those similar products.
Local has logs, and probably all the information needed to solve those problems. 90% of the problems I had, I was completely able to solve by myself, sometimes even posting here and letting people know of my thought process so they can solve the same or a similar problem.

Most of the posts we see here, come from the kind of people that Local opened doors to: Novice Developers and Inexperienced people, and I find that interesting, that’s why I always try to be active here.

I know some problems are very irritating and we don’t always want to deal with them, but that’s how software development works. Local has a small lifetime yet (compared to super polished software products) and I don’t see that much rough edges.
If I can recommend something to you, and you are facing a lot of problems with releases, changes, and new features, do as developers do with various other softwares and libraries. Wait a bit.
Get a working release, and keep it for a while, see if everything is working on the community and when you feel safe, update.

I’ve not upgraded to Mojave yet because I saw how much problems people are having, and there’s nothing wrong with that, it’s a big change, it broke not only Local, but several other products.
Well, I’ve spoke too much, but I hope I’ve showed my point clearly here. Despite the words and feelings, the discussion is valid.

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Hey @NdnaJnz –

I’m not trying to protect anyone, I’m just trying to be a force for positive change and encourage others to do the same.

As anyone who has used the Internet knows, the most vocal people are the ones that have a problem. Most people don’t go to the trouble of writing a review if they had an amazing dining experience or purchased the best shoes from Amazon, let alone having average experiences from those encounters.

I think these community forums are no different. I’d love to see more people create topics here about how much they love Local, or the cool ways in which others leverage Local, but the reality is, people only let you know when things break.

Every time I’ve upgraded Local on my machine it has been seamless. As a support person, I’ve definitely been exposed to many odd ways that things will break.

Before coming to Flywheel, I was doing most of my sites using the Roots stack. I actually really like using that family of products and certainly learned a lot about sys admin from them.

But I will say the ease of scaffolding a new WordPress project on Local is way faster than provisioning a new VM using Trellis. They both have pros and cons, and I think people should use the tools that they are most comfortable with and which solve the problems they are trying to solve.

Anyway, all that’s to say that we are trying to make things better and easier to use, and I hope that you do find Local to be a valuable tool.

– Ben

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Just to chime in here as a long time user of Local. In fact, I bought Pressmatic on the day it was first offered. So yes, I do have some experience using this product. As has been said above, most forum posts are for users having problems. I am not a developer per se, this is a hobby for me. I have used every release of Pressmatic and then Local. I run on a Mac. I have had issues but nothing that I haven’t been able to solve by updating VirtualBox, restarting Local and the “machine”, or restarting my Mac. Currently I’m using the most current versions of VirtualBox, Local and Mojave.

I’m not trying to do anything complex. I do plugin development and WP core development. Local has never failed me — ever. I have been active on these forums since they began. Asking questions or reporting issues when I needed to and providing answers when I could. Unfortunately it does not appear that many people search the forums for similar issues. I see many of the same issues asked and answered, again and again. I try to help and refer to the solved issue if I can.

Unhelpful responses are just that — unhelpful. People are here looking for help. They aren’t here looking to see complaints. If you want to complain write a blog post and a single post here pointing to it.

Local, as with other development environments, are complex pieces of software that are running on a near infinite combination of hardware and OS. Perhaps these forums could be better organized for specific issues maybe based upon hardware with cross-references to OS. I don’t know.

Fundamentally, at this time, this is FREE software. As I said, I paid for it and I don’t regret it for a moment. @clay @ben.turner and the rest of the Flywheel folks are trying to fix everyone’s issues. They could say “I’m sorry but our support will only cover getting Local up and running with a basic WordPress site.” But they don’t. I’ve seen plenty of questions whose premise really has nothing to do with Local being answered without complaint.

I’ve seen many posts about “my site white screened” and the error messages provided clearly point to a plugin or theme that has an error. This is not the place. Those questions belong on the WordPress.org support forum. If Local can start up, spin up a site, and load a basic WP site then the likely source of the problem isn’t with Local.

I have used MAMP, DesktopServer, and VVV. I prefer Local. Honestly if Local isn’t for you, OK, but cease and desist. If you want help trying to get Local to function — ask politely, I and others are usually happy to help. If at some point Flywheel wants to provide paid support then we can expect/demand prompt service. This is a busy forum for a free product with limited corporate resources. Most of us here have no financial relationship with Flywheel, we are simply users of Local.

Forums are interesting places and software support clearly isn’t for the faint of heart. Thanks to everyone who tries to provide assistance and answers for the benefit of others.

  • Andy
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In my experience LBFW is not a stable product and definitely shouldn’t be used for business use. Sure, when it works its amazing, but most of the time it doesn’t work. Complaints serve as a warning to others, it doesn’t matter if the product is free or not. I’d be happy to pay for a working product, at present its just one issue after another and many questions go unanswered. If you have a working copy that’s never let you down then that’s fantastic, good for you, but this forum is a very clear indication that FW has serious problems. I’ve never seen a forum like this one…

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Just to make clear: my main complaint is: C-O-M-M-U-N-I-C-A-T-I-O-N by the LbF team. It’s totally absent.
Why not have a blog on problems encountered?

As an example: the problem of LbF processes not terminating on Windows after closing the program.
It’s reported here:

This of course gets people frustrated, because you are unable to restart Local. Only after you’ve terminated those processes you can. Does LbF really expect users to go that far and find out?

Not only did the team first not recognize the problem, after a few more posts it was acknowledged that “something has to be fixed in an upstream dependency”.

I replied to that unhelpful answer with:

  • What ‘something’?
  • What ‘upstream dependency’?

And I would want to add to that:

  • What has changed where?
  • In that unnamed ‘upstream dependancy’?
  • In LbF?
  • If the latter, why is it so hard to revert the change?

Mind you, the issue mentioned above never got a solution from a developer. Only the last post in the thread (by @Serena) maybe offers a clue.
Did that get an answer or acknowledgement by a LbF developer? No.

That’s what I mean with Communication.
At the moment, users are just left in the dark.

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@frizzel77 did you notice that the topic you linked was updated with the problem as solved with 2.2.4?
*EDIT: At this point, I see this topic is just attempting to set a discussion on fire, without any good intention… That tone was repeated in other topics, and for no specific reason, as far as i’ve seen… I’m pulling myself out of this :wink:

I think that specific characteristics of the problem doesn’t do us no good, as for “what something” or “what upstream dependency”… This forum helps them find issues with the software, and probably none of the support forums out there you will see developers discussing proprietary code in an open forum.

I don’t really see where is this “communication issue” since they are active in the forums, along with some of us that try to help by experience. Frequent issues have their own category, as well as announcements and many other topics.

Maybe if you describe your specific problem, or unhappiness with something you can be more clear. If your last post was that description, I’m sorry but in my personal opinion I don’t see a problem in that at all. Issues/bugs/problems are part of any software, and I don’t say that to degrade LbF, just to say that this is the common place.
I see them attacking every piece of problem/bug that they see, whenever they are capable of doing so. Some issues are more complex than others, with dependencies, blockages, and all sorts of stuff. In that moment we gotta understand that this is their product, and they have the knowledge to take the decisions on that matter.

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