Hi Austin,
I discovered Local a few weeks ago and it solves the problem that my website is too big/complicated for my hosting provider. For what it’s worth, I have 8-9 custom post types with custom fields with about 20,000 posts, I use Custom Content Shortcode to pull content together across the content types, based on taxonomies and relationships.
I’m not using anything particularly special for the template though I’ve written a bunch of template files with embedded shortcode calls.
As an example, I have a page that displays >900 names of companies, pulling from a custom post type. Or another page that lists several hundred products. On my hosting provider, those pages can crap out. I was using WP-Rocket and Cloudflare to try to ameliorate the problem but it was still a problem.
Prior to Local, I was using Duplicator Pro to copy just my database to production. Unfortunately, my latest export (which was just under 10mb compressed) was a bit too much for the prod environment and I ended up with the white screen of death.
I imported my site to Local, installed Simply Static and exported the entire thing as static files (which works great for my use) and upload the resulting 23K files to prod.
As for Live Link: I moved my development machine to the basement. I use the Live Link url to work on it from my laptop anywhere in the house (or anywhere else). A friend asked about making blog posts on my site, so I gave him the link and now he can do that. Pretty fantastic in my opinion.
Last, I’m weighing in with a “me too” on the images. My friend and I discovered the problem this weekend. I went down a rabbit hole of MAMP/No-IP to try to find a way around it but did not (home router issues, mostly).
David
Welcome to the Local Community.
Sam