Local Connect

The Local Connect feature helps you move a site between Local and your remote hosting provider (WP Engine or Flywheel).

Pulling a site down to Local allows you to quickly create a sandbox for experimenting with new ideas or testing updates to plugins and themes. Once you finish working on the site, deploying is easy by clicking the “push” button!

Throughout development, you can pull down changes to the remote site to always have the latest content. Along the way, you can push works-in-progress to a staging environment to get feedback from co-workers or clients.

Getting started with Local Connect is easy:

  1. Connect Local to your hosting provider (Flywheel or WP Engine).
  2. Connect a specific local site to a remote site.
  3. Start pushing or pulling and select the remote environment you’d like to use!

Connect to a hosting provider

If you would like to connect to a hosting provider that is not Flywheel or WP Engine we suggest you download the plugin WP Migrate and utilize their Full-Site export feature. Here’s a doc that walks you through that process.

Connect to WP Engine

Step 1: Enable API Access

Go to the API Access page under Users > API Access to manage your account’s API settings. Next, toggle API access for the account you wish to enable.

Step 2: Install Local

Make sure you’re running the latest version of Local.

Step 3: Log in to WP Engine

The last step is to log in to WP Engine with the same credentials used to log into the WP Engine User Portal.

Step 4: Enter WP Engine Credentials

You’ll be prompted to enter your WP Engine hosting credentials.

Step 5: Confirm the connection in Local

Now that you’re logged in to your WP Engine account, you’ll get redirected back to Local. You’ll know you’ve logged in successfully because your WP Engine sites will now be listed within the “Connect” tab of Local!

note

Only one WP Engine account is supported at this time, but you can always log out from one profile and log in to another!

note

Local Connect does not support a full Atlas push/pull; the functionality is available specifically for the WordPress install and site files. It does not currently support pushing and pulling the front end to and from an Atlas site on WP Engine.

You can learn more about Atlas and Headless WordPress here

Connect to Flywheel

Step 1: Navigate to the “Connect” tab in Local

To get started, navigate to the “Connect” tab in Local, and click the “Log in to Your Host” button.

A screenshot showing where to link Local to the remote hosting account.

Step 2: Log in to Flywheel

Select “Log in to Your Host” and select the log in link next to Flywheel.

A screenshot of the available hosts that Local can link to.

Step 3: Enter Flywheel Credentials

You’ll be prompted to enter your Flywheel hosting credentials.

Step 4: Confirm the link to Local

Within your Flywheel account you’ll be prompted to confirm the link to Local.

Step 5: Confirm the connection in Local

Now that you’re logged in to your Flywheel account, you’ll get redirected back to Local. You’ll know you’ve logged in successfully because your Flywheel sites will now be listed within the “Connect” tab of Local!

note

Only one Flywheel account is supported at this time, but you can always log out from one profile and log in to another!

Push and Pull

Once you’ve linked Local to a hosting provider you can pull a site down by navigating to the “Connect” tab in Local.


Select the host you want to work with from the Site Overview page for sites you already have in Local. You can click the “Pull” button to download changes from the remote site or select the “Push” button to deploy your Local site to staging or production.

A screenshot of the Connect tab in Local where you can pull a remote site down.

Link a local site to a remote host other than WP Engine or Flywheel by selecting “No host selected” in the lower-right corner of the site-overview page.

A screenshot of the site overview page showing how to link a site to a remote host.

Deploy a site by selecting the the “Push to…” button in the lower-right corner of the site-overview page.

A screenshot of the push button on the site overview page.

Remote environments

Depending on the hosting provider, you have options for the kind of environment you can push-to or pull-from:

By default, the production environment is used, but if you’d like to deploy to a staging environment that doesn’t exist, Local will direct you to create that environment.

When pulling or pushing a site, select the remote environment you’d like to work with.

A screenshot of selecting the remote environment to work with.

If a staging environment doesn’t exist remotely, Local will prompt you to create one

A screenshot showing Local prompting to enable staging on a remote environment.
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MagicSync

The MagicSync viewer allows you to quickly see which files have changed between the Local and remote site and select which of those files should be deployed. More details about using the MagicSync viewer can be found in this help doc.

If you don’t need this fine-grained control over what gets deployed, you can disable MagicSync from “Preferences > MagicSync”.

A screenshot showing the MagicSync setting in Local's preferences.

Path Exclusions for Local Connect

When pushing or pulling a site, Local excludes certain files for security, performance, or reliability reasons.

Local excludes these paths relative to your site’s root:

Local excludes every occurrence of these paths within your site:

Special exclusions based on regex patterns: