Backup WordPress site to localhost + publish regular changes to live site

[westerdaled]

Hi

To test a new Genesis Theme and other changes, I thought I could do with my cloning my site to run on local instance of WordPress. Ultimately, I want to sync any new or updated: Post, Pages, Plugins with the live server.

Hence, I will be interested to hear what is the tools and technique anyone else might have deployed to achieve the above. To make a start:

1) Install WAMP on my Window 10 machine - done ( seems the WWW Publishing Service isn't now enabled by default)

2) Backup and restore : did a bit of searching and came up with these links

Create a local copy of a wordpress site

Install XCloner or ???

Daniel

[Christoph]

Hi Daniel,

I never used WAMP.
I started with http://instantwp.com/ and switched to DesktopServer from http://serverpress.com/
Make a backup with Duplicator, import it into DesktopServer and if you really want to update the live site from your local copy, you can "direct deploy" with the professional version of DesktopServer.

Alternatively, you can just push and pull the database with Migrate DB Pro or similar plugins and upload changes to the theme files via FTP.

I would not bother uploading plugins. Just update them on the live website.

---

https://www.christophherr.com | Genesis Customizations | Buy me a coffee

[westerdaled]

Cristoph

WAMP installs ok as luckily windows 10 no longer enables the IIS / W3C service by default. However, to get a fully supported system and have the pretty system tray icon to accurately reflect the online status of Apache; you need to install:multiple VC Runtime versions, (9 -14) both 32-bit and 64-bit. When I politely pointed out to the moderator/owner that this a barrier for increasing user adoption, he deleted my forum post! ;-(

XAMP is easier to use but clashes with Skype so I would need to make some config changes to get this to work

Looking at your suggestions. InstantWP.com looks good alternative to WAMP and MAMP. however ServerPress looks very impressive. I would feel so much more confident making changes to the my site if I could clone , test offline and subsequently push updates or back them out with just a few steps.

I have downloaded the free version and asked for a quote for Premium to see if the costs out weigh the time saving benefits.

Thanks again.

Daniel

[Christoph]

Hi Daniel,

most local server solutions on Windows will clash with Skype.
The easiest fix is to change the settings in Skype to not use port 80/443.
(Somewhere in Tools/Options/Advaced, IIRC)

There is usually a 20% coupon somewhere for Desktop Server.

Serverpress just released a new plugin yesterday that sounds like what you are looking for:
https://wordpress.org/plugins/wpsitesynccontent/

It´s still in beta so don't use it on a production site just yet.

---

https://www.christophherr.com | Genesis Customizations | Buy me a coffee

[ilkweb]

I use WAMP with WP Migrate DB. It's great for doing the find and replace on URLs without breaking serialised data. Instant WP is what I started with but I do not use it as much anymore.

I'm not so sure about syncing the changes automatically. DesktopServer might do that, but really, I find using WP Migrate DB is easy enough for pushing and pulling database changes.

If you change directory content, like style.css or any of the folders in /uploads/ it is easy enough for me to FTP into my remote server and copy the files to my WAMP directory.

[Author]

Posts