Hi Jack,
I've been developing WordPress websites for a long time and I have to admit that I've tried a bunch of solutions to work locally and push my changes online as simple as possible.

At the beginning I was usign MAMP and a nice PHP script to do the search/replace once the database was uploaded into the online server.

Then I started to use Vagrant and Git, but the database part was always left apart with the script I linked before.

Later on I found WordMove, a great ruby gem that will let me pull/push all my changes (files and database) via an SSH connection. This was like the holy grail of WordPress development since I can download the online database into my local environment with a simple shell command: wordmove pull -d.

Nowadays I am usign a bash script create from a collague of mine that will create a Docker container with WordMove installed on it.

This scripts helps me a lot because I can create a separate container where I can also experiment with the server configuration and be safe because, instead of a Vagrant solution, if I compromise the web server I am working on all the others will simply run.

The only downside I see in usign this solution with Docker instead of a Vagrant machine is that I can only run a WordPress installation at time because all of them are pointing to 0.0.0.0:8080, but if you edit the docker-compose.yml and configure the Apache Virtual Hosts I think you can solve this little problem.

At the end of the day this is a no brainer for me because shut down a container is simple as:

1. docker-compose stop
2. cd /path/wordpress/
3. docker-compose up -d

(I use the -d option because it gives me back the terminal instead to show all the operations in a verbose manner)

Hope this can help, I'll link below a coupple of article we've written on WordMove and Docker. They are in italian but I hope Google Translate can help you out ;)

• WordMove, una gemma per il deploy WordPress
• Docker per lo sviluppo WordPress

Not specific to Wordpress but from PHP/MySQL work in general (and Drupal):

The approach I take with the database, which works because I have full control of both sides of the equation, is to just do a database dump on the remote server and then use the file I've generated to replicate the database locally. I've got all the content and configuration done, boom, on to coding!

Remote connecting to the DB is possible but you'll need it to be a copy of the database. And requires a little bit of tech savvy, potentially. And introduces some security concerns.

I really liked to use vagrantup.com/ when I was still doing PHP on a daily basis. There's a great vagrant setup at vccw.cc

You could, actually, have the vagrant box automatically give you a ton of dummy data by running some key SQL scripts. Especially true if you find yourself consistently using the same sorts of custom post types.

As for remote db, yeah, you can totally do that if your remote server is set up to handle that interaction. I'm not sure how much direct control you have over the databases you work with.

What you want is definitely possible, but as with a lot of things it might take a bit of time to get it to behave in exactly the way you want.

I use a combination of Docker and a whole bunch of Bash scripts to do what I want — used to use Vagrant, but a VM like that really burned up my laptop battery.
Whenever I start a new WordPress project, I start it off with some NPM commands:

1. npm run docker:create-image — makes a new docker image based on the apache:php7.1 image
2. npm run docker:create-container — create a new container based on the image, name it, and open up the relevant ports (80 and 3306)
3. npm run docker:collect — collects a whole database, plugins and themes from the existing site, using SSH, based on information in env.sh
4. npm run docker:start — starts the docker instance
5. npm run docker:provision — provisions the container with the collected data, again based on env.sh in the folder root.

At this point I can run npm start to fire up browser-sync, that automatically gives me an IP and opens up a port so that other machines can visit too.

I personally combine this with webpack and browser-sync for most of the front-end stuff, but I think that's more dependant on your use case. When needed I can also log into the docker instance.

I'd really recommend messing around with all this yourself for a bit, especially the Docker bit took me a while to understand.

i use mostly de.wordpress.org/plugins/wp-migrat... the db migrate tool. you can export the databases from your remote server to your local environment and vice versa directly from the wordpress backend. the free version only allows for downloads of the database but the pro version allows for direct syncing. it will do a search and replace for the hardcoded url´s in the database as well.

i would definitely recommend spending the time and creating a customized base theme with common components, plugins like above mentioned and tools already ready like grunt etc. it saves a lot of time and unneccessary repetitive work

github.com/Nezteb/I_Hate_WordPress...