How to develop a Magento site - offline or online?

[tcjohans]

I'm completely new to Magento and I'm wondering what is the recommended or typical procedure to build and develop a Magento-based e-commerce site:

Should I create it directly on our web server and develop it directly online?

Or should I place a version on my own computer (e.g. at localhost), develop it locally offline, and then upload my offline version to the web server occasionally?

What procedure do you recommend?

When I develop PHP sites I usually work with an offline version on my laptop and periodically upload the site to the server from there. But I get the impression this is not the standard way to work with Magento...

Thomas

[kab8609]

Hey there,

The majority of us develop on our local. We use version control to push it to a staging site. Then when the changes are approved they go to production.

I do know some people that will write their code on their computer using a IDE, then it auto syncs to the server.

It is relatively important to make sure the setups are similar if not exact. Things that work in PHP 5.5 are different in PHP 5.6, etc.

The key is to use version control and one out of sync file could potential cause a lot of issues.