Environment Setup

This week I had to temporarily work on a new laptop so I had to set up my dev environment from scratch.  Of course, I wanted the same tools and apps I had on my permanent environment.  I find that these tools and apps stick with you for some time so below is a list of apps that I needed to install on my new development environment.

• Dropbox – to easily share files between computers both locally and over the web.
• FileZilla – to upload files to the servers
• MAMP – to test your code locally before uploading to the live servers
  • See MAMP Optimizations to start MAMP on startup without the GUI.
  • Remember to set the <Directory> override to AllowOverride All if you want your WordPress or other sites to use .htaccess.
• SourceTree – to push/pull your code so it stays in synch with other environments you may have or other teammates.
  • Set up your SSH keys using BitBucket’s tutorial.
• Sublime Text 2  – to edit your files.
  • If you want to open files via the terminal, follow this updated tutorial.
• WordPress – not so much a tool, but it is part of the testing environment.
• Slack or HipChat -or whatever trending chat program.  to communicate to others
• Virtual Box – To run those pesky versions of Internet Explorer.
  • Then head on to get free VMs from Microsoft so you can get all the lovely versions of IE.
• ImageOptim – To optimize images, taking up less disk space and load faster.