In the past I have downloaded and installed the latest version of XAMPP for my local Wordpress (WP) development. On the live side, I use Hostgator (HG) shared Reseller hosting.
Up to this point, I have not had any errors or problems with HGs environment but I read yesterday that local development should take place in an environment that duplicates the live one. The latest version of WP has the following recommendations for a host:
- PHP version 7 or greater
MySQL version 5.6 or greater OR MariaDB version 10.0 or greater
HTTPS support
My Question: Should I be using an older version of XAMPP and WP that use MySQL v5.5 to do local development, knowing that it will definitely work when I transfer it to live OR are the differences between MySQl v5.5 and v5.6 so small as to be insignificant?
Thanks to all for viewing.