Instructions on how to update from 'local by Flywheel" to “Local (Beta)” indicate that one needs to delete a site immediately after exporting it. I do not feel comfortable deleting a site before I ensure it has been properly imported to “Local”/“Local Beta”, and is working properly.
In fact, as it’s Beta, an issue could reveal itself not only immediately, during the import process, but a bit later.
It seems to me that while the website databases and files would not remain synched between the two apps, they should at least be isolated, yes ? Theoretically, (and, say, ensuring the proper entry in the hosts file), could I not continue to run the website from either (but not both simultaneously) versions of Local/Local(Beta)/LocalByFlywheel ?
Granted, maintaining hosts file, and even the incontinuity between the 2 versions of the website would not be ultimately practical, useful or at all recommended… Rather, I’m asking, is there any harm done if I do not DELETE, as the instructions tell me to do?
As the instructions are written, I’m afraid to export/delete, in case of failure. This is Beta, after all. And I’m on Windows, which seems to lag in support, or at least it seems to find issues not present on other OS’s.
While I “could” re-import, 1) that won’t work if somehow the export was corrupted 2) some subtleties are lost at export/import (I think notes is one) - I usually need to do something custom, overriding your default settings, Every Time I create a new site, for it to work properly. And it’s been a while so I don’t remember off-hand just what. I don’t want to have to try to remember, or go through, that painful process, if I can just leave the current install in place, in case of “emergency”.
Oh, I think one of the issues is that my wordpress files are installed in a subdirectory, but that settup is not directly supported by Flywheel. Whatever Flywheel stuff I have to override, I’d rather not have to do that, if leaving a website on all various versions of your app is a possibility. In case of Beta failure.
PS
I am one of those who, that after some update a while back, experienced painfully slow page loads when using Local by Flywheel. Up to a 1min or a basic page load, up to 5min for longer background processes. Even updating plugins is error prone and practically hangs it’s become so slow. Flywheel by Local has become Unusable, really.
So, I would love to hear feedback from actual users of “Local”/“Local (Beta)” who experienced the Local by Flywheel slowness on Windows 10… Did “Local / (Beta)” fix this issue for you? Is it still slow (but maybe faster)? Any other issues or gotchas/advice about using the new versions?
PPS
So in case you ask what possible use case exists for this question:
-
general knowledge and understanding
(“shouldn’t happen” isn’t reliable, and keeping minimal work of things, JIC, is preferable.
Knowledge of How things work / are designed is King) -
For example, one “website” I have is simply for testing whether WP or plugin updates will break my site (I have some legacy code), before I let WP update the live website. (Actually, I then also test updates on a more current version of the website - first it’s just big picture breakage because of legacy code).
Here, I don’t care if the databases are out of synch, or newer image files don’t exist: the only file changes are made through the WP update interface itself. So, if Local Beta crashes or I loose the website running on Beta, either now, or some random point down the road, No big. I could just fire up Local by Flywheel version of the site, and run the updates from there. Doesn’t matter if it’s several versions of updates to catch up on, or if I need to add/remove a few plugins.
What I don’t want to do is loose everything, or have to go through the pain of creating a “new” site, fixing Flywheels vision of how “all” sites work, to the actuality of how my site is settup, then import, but then update the database to the new url, update the htaccess file from the import to reflect that this is not a live site as well as update its urls, then change which plugins are active/inactive due to it being dev site, not live site… (essentially, I wanna avoid b/c: Creating and Importing sites is Not straight forward for everyone - LbF only supports a single configuration pattern.)
