WordPress technology company, WP Engine announced that all Local tools and features for WordPress development are now free to everyone, including the ones that were previously exclusive to Local Pro. Local, which currently has almost 300,000 users, is a set of WordPress developer tools and solutions. Local’s development environment allows users to build WordPress sites easily and test the sites and increase the development workflow speed.
A sandbox to experiment
Local provides a sandbox to experiment allowing development sites while focusing on important parts, instead of debugging local environments. Some of the Local Pro’s features which are now available for free in Local are:
- Live Links – Send a near-real-time preview link of sites to clients without deploying to staging or production
- MagicSync – Push website updates live with additional file-specific control that includes recommendations for updated, added and deleted files
- Link Checker – Scan and find problem links on a website to avoid issues later
- Instant Reload – Save time by working with the site code and browser side-by-side to maintain flow-state and streamline previewing CSS changes
- Cloud Backups – Sync Local accounts to Google Drive or Dropbox to save ongoing work and add a site backup to Local whenever needed
Seth Halpern, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Small and Medium Business at WP Engine said,
“We’re doubling-down on our commitment to give back to the WordPress community by making all Local tools and features, including those formerly only available with a paid Local Pro subscription, free and available to all Local users. We believe Local Pro features benefit a broader WordPress developer community and we want to deliver the full value of Local to more developers than ever. We want to empower the freedom to create on WordPress by making all Local features available for free.”