Yesterday morning I tried out the new MAMP Pro 3.0, and I must say that it is awesome. Unlike the old MAMP, I can quickly spin up new development sites with custom urls like, “www.themightymo.dev” using a simple gui interface. Additionally, it seamlessly integrates into my existing git workflow, because I can point the web root for a specific url (such as www.themightymo.dev) to my local git repository. So there is no need to clone the repository into the “htdocs” folder as I used to have to do with the old MAMP.
Additionally, MAMP Pro provides a simple way to create self-signed SSL certificates so my local installs work fine with clones of my “https” sites (such as www.themightymo.com).
The other tool I was playing with over the last couple of weeks is called, “Vagrant“, specifically the “VVV” distribution. It is, in some ways, more feature-rich than MAMP Pro in that it allows for exact clones of production servers. This is awesome for high value sites on custom setups. But for 99% of websites on the internet, it is overkill.
With Vagrant, there is no gui built in – it’s all command line. This gives users the fine-grain control they need, but it has a steep learning curve, and, for beginners, it’ll be next-to-impossible to get up-and-running. I did find a gui-ish script as well as some helpful add-on command line libraries but getting those set up was a big learning curve as well. With MAMP Pro, it’s as simple as downloading a file and double-clicking it.
So, while Vagrant has its awesome stuff to be sure and will be really useful in some specific situations, I will be using MAMP Pro for most of the websites I work on and only pulling out Vagrant where it’s absolutely necessary.
From Toby’s Blog
- “Now THAT was a good meeting!”A single effective meeting can change the course of history for a company. Imagine if you could lead effective meetings EVERY DAY! You can, but it takes curiosity & practice. This article is a good place to start your journey to a more effective you.
- Never Respond to RFPs & Custom Proposal RequestsY'all who work at normal 9-5 jobs don't need to deal with the B.S. that is an RFP process (or rather you get paid to deal with it). But us freelancers gotta deal with a whole big bag of schtuff when it comes to custom proposals. Here's my quick-and-dirty RFP filtering process that I use […]
- What content should I put on my homepage?I see websites as one stop of many on the sales journey, useful to help get customers from Point A to Point B in the sales process (or maybe from Point D to Point E). If you are wondering about what to put on your homepage, start with these basic sales-related questions: Who, specifically, will…
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