Wordpress Migration made simple

[coffee]

I run my business site with wordpress and have always found that updating it with changes has been a bit of a pain in the *ss as you have to be very careful of the changes you make and to backup files on the webserver before you make changes. So, I wanted to make a fully functional copy of my website on my local file server so I can make changes and if they work then I can migrate the changes to the actual website hosted elsewhere. Normally, This involves backing up your mysql database and files from the website and then make changes to the wp-config file to reflect the URL changes needed to run the site locally. This can get a bit involving depending on where your site is hosted.

However, I ran across a plugin that made migrating a copy of your website extremely easy.

https://wordpress.org/plugins/all-in-one-wp-migration/

Simply install it on the website (if you scroll down the page there is a zip file for download) and run it on your website to back it up. It will provide a download file that you can save locally. Then install it on your local webserver setup. Login to the admin area of your local website and run it again and choose import. What is so nice about this plugin is that it takes care of all URLS as it installs and after you logout and log back in you have a complete copy of your main website running locally. It takes care of all configurations and you really do not do anything except provide some basic info when you start, Click import and select your backup file you downloaded from your website and let it do its thing.

In about 10 minutes I had my site available locally so I can edit and make changes. Then when I am happy with the changes just import it back to my main website.

Hope this helps,

coffee

 

[fencepost]

I ran into issues with at least one of those for migration last time I needed to, so I coughed up the money for Updraft Plus - it's a free backup plugin, but there's a paid option for full restore onto different hosts (with database and path tweaking as required). Worked nicely, and I've kept using it for convenient full-restorable backups. That saved me at least once from problems after an incompatibility in a theme upgrade.

 

[coffee]

I ran into issues with at least one of those for migration last time I needed to, so I coughed up the money for Updraft Plus - it's a free backup plugin, but there's a paid option for full restore onto different hosts (with database and path tweaking as required). Worked nicely, and I've kept using it for convenient full-restorable backups. That saved me at least once from problems after an incompatibility in a theme upgrade.

Thats interesting. Do you know if it is this specific plugin that you had the issue with? Did you ever figure out what your problem was?

 

[fencepost]

Thats interesting. Do you know if it is this specific plugin that you had the issue with? Did you ever figure out what your problem was?

It's been at least a year, maybe more since I had to do it so any info would be long outdated now.

I inherited the site because their web developer/hoster actually died, and I believe the folks he worked with were not planning on continuing with the web design & hosting portion of the business. My basic approach was "try one, if it fails, move to the next."