I have a domain-based multisite with domain mapping. Until now I’ve been developing locally with
- my hosts file setup to handle all sites through localhost
- a flag in my wp-config.php, indicating whether to use the local or live db
This makes development very pleasant, because development and production environment are very similar and all paths are always identical.
Now I need to develop on a public / non-localhost address. What’s the best way to accomplish that – or what options exist in general.
I don’t have any experience with your specific configuration so I can only offer some general advice. But obviously the closer a development/test environment is to the production environment the better. Saves a lot of headache in the long run.
If your production environment is already configured and live I’d do everything possible to duplicate that in your new development environment. Of course you’ll either want different host names (dev.example.com versus http://www.example.com) or will have to use your hosts file to ‘trick’ your machine in to going to the new dev envrionment. It’s basically the same thing that you’re doing now, only WordPress isn’t on your local machine.