The biggest issue we faced during the initial development phase was the lack of a local development environment. This led to several challenges:
Constantly transferring files between the local machine and the server resulted in slow development cycles. Even small changes required uploading files, which was time-consuming and inefficient.
Debugging on the live server was difficult and risky. Identifying and fixing errors required modifying files directly on the server, which could potentially disrupt the site's functionality.
Developing directly on the server increased the risk of introducing errors. Without a local testing environment, changes were deployed directly to the live site, which could lead to unexpected issues.
The shared server's resource limitations posed a challenge. We had to be mindful of resource consumption, which restricted our ability to experiment and optimize the development process.
To address these challenges, we recognized the need to establish a robust local development workflow.
npx @11ty/eleventy --serveUtilizing npx @11ty/eleventy --serve proved to be a valuable solution. This tool allowed us to preview changes locally, providing instant feedback and significantly improving the development process.
While we didn't implement it in this initial phase, we considered using Docker to create a consistent development environment. Docker can help to eliminate inconsistencies between different development setups.
npx @11ty/eleventy --serve greatly enhance the development workflow by providing live previews.