WP Engine’s Local development app has released version 6.7.0 with Site Grouping, a highly requested feature that will greatly improve users’ workflows. It allows users to create custom groups in the sidebar of the Local dashboard page for better organization of their sites.

Local users have been asking for this feature since 2017, as many are managing dozens of WordPress sites. In June 2022, the Local development team began designing and then building the feature a couple months later, incorporating feedback from user interviews and usability testing.

In the new Site Grouping feature, sites can be easily dragged between groups and groups can be reordered up or down, as illustrated in the release notes.

Another handy feature released with Site Grouping is the ability to start, stop, restart, or delete all the sites in a group from the context menu (the three dots to the right of the group name). Sites can also be sorted by how recently they were used via the clock icon at the top of the groups sidebar.

To get users started, all their Starred sites have been placed in a new Starred group at the top of the sidebar. Full documentation for using the new Site Grouping feature is available in Local’s help resources.

WP Migrate, formerly known as WP Migrate DB and recently acquired by WP Engine, introduced full-site exports and imports to Local in January 2023. Local version 6.7.0 improves imports from WP Migrate so that they auto-select the PHP, web server, and database version closest to the production environment if Local offers the same major/minor version.

This release also includes several bug fixes with Local importing or pulling to an existing site, where the site’s existing settings or environment were not applied. If you experienced this bug, make sure to update to the latest 6.7.0 release before attempting more imports.