Joomla on development server or computer?

[SocketPup]

So my current project is run locally on my computer, using Xammp.

But I have been told I can also setup a development server through my domain and hosting for my website.

What is the preferred way?

[AMurray]

Whether subdomain or local host is your choice.

If going with local computer, we'd recommend using WAMPServer (https://wampserver.aviatechno.net/) instead of XaMPP because WAMPServer lets you choose your PHP version among other things on the fly whereas XAMPP is tied to the version of PHP that ships with it, and PHP can't be changed without reinstalling XAMPP completely. WAMPServer lets you change PHP and install 'modules' such as additional PHP versions, or versions of MySQL or Maria DB etc as well so you can do more wider testing on a variety of server setups.

You can make a sub-domain for the development site like https://dev.yoursite.com (refer to your web hosting company documentation on how to make a subdomain, usually done in a hosting admin system like cPanel).

When ready to put the site live, copy the site and database using Akeeba backup and Kickstart.
https://docs.joomla.org/Copying_a_Joomla_website

[SocketPup]

Thank you. I have been told by others that I should use WAMP and not Xammp, so I'll defintely use that for my next Joomla project.

[sgiobbio]

To A Murray's answer, I would like to add that Laragon is an excellent and very versatile tool for your localhost testing.

[Webdongle]

Definitely https://wampserver.aviatechno.net/ not sub domain.

A subdomain as development can confuse issues especially if the subdomain folder is nested under the main domain.

With wamp you can have several instances of Joomla level with each other in Wamp's \www folder
Also with wamp you don't have to create the database because the database is created during installation (just put the the database name of your choice in the field).