Installing Local by Flywheel (LbF)

You ready to make your own personal web server on your own computer? Awrighty, let’s proceed.

1. Visit the Local by Flywheel site and download
   The LbF site is here. You can check out all the features and information about LbF. Scroll down to check the minimum system requirements before you download. It’ll require at least 1GB hard drive space and 4GB memory if your computer runs Windows. LbF is currently developing a pro version, but the best thing about LbF is that it will always be free, so don’t think about the cost about using this software.
2. Install and follow the prompt instructions as shown
   Double-click the executable file you downloaded and just follow what the screen says. Don’t worry about what type of web server (Apachy, nginx, etc.) that you want LbF to create. You can always change this at a later time if you need to.

   LbF also requires another software called VirtualBox. Some of us use VirtualBox to create a “virtual hard drive” for certain types of software that we want to work on but don’t want installed in our actual hard drive. I use this whenever I run Ubuntu Linux on my computer for training course purposes. If you have VirtualBox installed, then your installation can go a little faster. If you don’t have VirtualBox installed, LbF will install it for you, so you don’t really have to do anything at this point.

   If you run into errors during installation, check to be sure that your computer fits the requirements mentioned in the LbF website. If  there’s anything else that’s wrong, you can join their support forum here and ask away. Otherwise, you should be good to go.

3. Open up LbF
   After you’re finished installing, open up LbF. It will have some loading going on when you first open it, but that’s normal. You just need to be patient and wait.

Once you open LbF and wait until everything is loaded up, you should see something like this:

(Ignore the “ADRICULOUSLIFE” bit on the screenshot. That’s my personal blog development project. The list should be completely blank.)

If you are seeing this, then you are ready to move on. Otherwise, check the errors, join the LbF community for help if you’re stuck.