I have a website that I designed and did all the frontend dev work. I then handed all my files over to my Wordpress developer. They built out the site and gave me access to the files on Gitlab. What I want to do is set up a local copy of the repo on my Mac (which I have done ), branch it and make some CSS changes to the site. Commit those changes and let the developer merge what I have done. I'm new to WP, so I haven't done much in the way of setting up a site. I've watched a couple of videos, but they all seem to be for someone who needs to download and install a fresh install of WP. I don't think this is what I want to do. I downloaded and installed MAMP, and set up localhost, tried to point it to my local repo on my Mac, but that's not working. I just can't find anything to point me in the right direction. Hoping someone here has some advice. Thanks in advance!
If I understand correctly, you've already cloned the site to your local and you've made a database in MAMP? And you've named them the same.
From there you should be able to pull up localhost:8888/databaseName and proceed with the WordPress install that you cloned. If this isn't working check to make sure that you cloned the project into the same directory that you specified when you set up MAMP. Still not working, check to see if you also cloned the wp-config.php file. Then go to the wp-config.php file and make sure the database specified is the correct database name and that username and password are "root". Still no? Make sure the table prefixes in the database are the same.
For background - usually when you install a fresh WordPress, the first screen you come to has you set up all this info. And, if you are cloning a project, usually the config file is in .gitignore since it is specific to where you are using it. 😀
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I have never used wordpress before, My boss has given me access to a site which was created using wordpress. then He asked me how I am going to make sure I don't break the site accidentally, I told him I would create a backup on my local computer so that all my changes can be restored if I mess up.
I have the wordpress dashboard up. How do I back up EVERYTHING, I hear there are two separate things I need to back up? someone please help me.
PS: I don't think he would like me to do this with out the use of additional plugins.
There are two separate things:
Your website database. Simply export all the MySQL tables from the database, which is dedicated to your site.
The site files, everything you've got under WordPress folder, /wp-includes, /wp-content, /wp-admin directories and all files.
This should do it all. You can test on your localhost to make sure it's everything that's necessary.
You can backup your WordPress either from your hosting account (preferable) or from your WP dashboard.
You need to backup two things - all the files (the root of your Wordpress installation) and the database for your WP installation.
Since you only have access to the dashboard, you have to use plugin for this.
Two of my favorite free backup plugins are:
BackupWordpress - https://wordpress.org/plugins/backupwordpress/
BackWPup - https://wordpress.org/plugins/backwpup/
They are intuitive and easy to work with, so you shouldn't have issues.
If you go to the dashboard go to "tools" in the left toolbar. Select "export". On the export page you can report that you want to export "all content". This will get you the items that you need from the server.
Then you need to install wordpress to your machine. You can download that from: https://wordpress.org/download/
Once you have that on your machine you also need a local server to run it and test it. I like WAMP, but it partially depends on your operating system. I suggest the following video to get you up to speed on how to get the localhost set up and running: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snFzbPm_RUE
Hope this helps!
I'm in the progress of setting up a development and live development environment for some basic projects I'm working on. Ideally I want git to push changes from the development server to the live site. However I want each version to use the exact same database so the posts and content are identical at all times.
Obviously the Site URL is set to only the live site so the development site's links don't work. If I overrode the site url in the wp-config.php file of each and used .gitignore to ignore both wp-config.php files would this be enough for this to work or is there something else I'm missing?
I'm posting in the hope somebody has tried it before me and that might have any answers to problems I encounter now or in the future.
Thanks in advance, Ollie
Make sure you add the .gitignore entry before changing and committing the wp-config.php.
Once you update wp-config.php, it's going to go through and update URLs in the database. Since WordPress is stateless - to say there is no session management, there is no way of tracking if a database has been swapped.
Lastly, WordPress uses a MySQL database, which wouldn't be versioned unless you went through a lot of work to do so. Aside from wp-config.php, there aren't any other stored references of what the site's URLs should be.
Ok, so I'm familiar with creating local Wordpress builds, and have been chugging along happily with the technique outlined in Smashing's MAMP-based article. My question goes a step beyond this.
The article is great for developing generic themes, but when developing sites (not necessarily blogs) based in Wordpress, for me at least, it's a little painful come launch day.
I have to go back in and reconfigure the server's Wordpress to match what I've already done locally. Settings have to be entered again, plugins need be installed again, menus recreated, and css will have to be altered to reference the unique classes/id's Wordpress generates for posts/pages/custom taxonomies…sometimes things are missed in the process. What I want to know is this:
Is there an easy way to automate cloning or mirroring the build on my local machine to the remote server?
Even if you have to just LMGTFY me, that would help. I don't exactly know what I should be searching for. Searches dealing with 'mirroring wordpress configuration' and 'cloning wordpress configuration' returns tutorials on moving content, which I know how to do.
If it helps, I'm running OSX 10.6.8 with xcode dev tools, git, ruby, node, and homebrew. All of my live servers have ssh access as well as ftp, and I build with the most current versions of Wordpress.
Here are some easy steps to follow:
Download and install the WP Migrate DB plugin.
Go to Tools > WP Migrate DB and fill-in the blank fields(New address (URL), New file path and optionally check/uncheck the other options). Click on Export Database and save the export file to your computer.
Make a .zip archive with ALL of your files(the /wp-admin, /wp-content, /wp-includes directories and all files in the root directory).
Upload that file to your production server, where you want your WordPress site to reside.
Go to your cPanel(or use the unzip command through SSH) File Manager(or any other alternative that you might have) and unzip the file that you just uploaded.
If you don't already have a Database set-up on your production server - create one through the hosting control panel(for cPanel, it would be Creating a mySQL database in cPanel, for plesk it would be Plesk 7 Tutorial: Creating a database, for anything else, just google it up, or try your hosting's FAQ). Remember/write-down your Database Name, Database User and Password.
Edit the wp-config.php file and change the values for the DB_NAME, DB_USER, DB_PASSWORD and optionally DB_HOST - but this is usually localhost - if that doesn't work try asking your web host, or if you have phpMyAdmin, log-in to it and look at the very top of the page - in this case the DB_HOST would be localhost.
After you've done all of that, log-in to your DB administration tool(most of the time this would be phpMyAdmin, but it could be something else as well) and upload the database export file that you save to your computer in step 2. Note: If your hosting hasn't provided you with a DB administration tool, I would suggest that you upload the phpMiniAdmin(click on the "Download latest version" link and save the file to your computer) script to your production server. Then go to that script(if your website is located at http://example.com/, go to http://example.com/phpminiadmin.php) and enter your DB details. On top of that page, you will see an import link. Click on it and upload your DB export file. Note 2: phpMiniAdmin doesn't support gzip-compressed files, so if you did check the Compress file with gzip option in step 2, you will have to re-do that step with this option unchecked.
Log-in to your site and go to Settings > Permalinks in order to update your permalink structure.
Check the permissions of the /wp-content/uploads and /wp-content/plugins directories - make sure that you will be able to upload images and plugins without any problems.
That's pretty much it. It might seem like a lot, but I follow this process for almost every site that I upload to production servers and it can take me as less as a bit under 10 minutes to do all of that(considering that I usually use custom MySQL commands, instead of the WP Migrate DB plugin - I should probably start using it :) ). Once you get used to the process and you don't encounter any low-quality web hostings, you should be perfectly fine with these steps.
Note: Since you used ssh as one of your tags, I assume that you usually have ssh access to the production server. If you don't I'm still assuming that you have a cPanel access(if that's not true and you can't unzip files on the server, then upload all files manually via FTP client, instead of doing steps 3 and 4).
I guess the only way is to copy the database or part of it.
What I do is to copy the relevant tables and modify manually the site URLs in table options. There are only 2. There is also a nice plugin velvet-blues-update-urls to modify all links, after the site URLs are set manually to be able to access the backend, in case posts are also copied.
Next, copy all theme directory files to the same directory in the site, assuming you are using the same theme.
Both processes can be automated with a PHP script.
I am not sure this is what you want, but hope this helps.
Not sure that this is exactly what you need, but to move a site you can use the built in Wordpress "export" and "import" options. As far as I remember there was an option when importing to change URL's and the import would change a few things for you.
Even if this does not answer your exact question, hope it helps.
I'm starting some work on an existing wordpress project on Github. Basically, the entire Wordpress install is on Github. I cloned it to my local XAMPP installation. What's the best way to get everything configured? I know I have to make a config file and get WP talking to my MYSQL database. I did that, and while I got the wp-admin stuff working fine, the front-side stuff isn't showing up.
In the database you need to update the links so that they point to your local host.
The way I do that is that I make a backup of the sql database and then replace everything like:
orig:
www.domain.com/site/...
with:
localhost/site/...
And then restore it
In 2020 it's perfect plugin to do this. It's called Duplicator. You need to install it and after it you have 4 steps to configure your installation on which machine it will be running. It's really easy to use, see this link:
https://wordpress.org/plugins/duplicator/
I run my blog using Wordpress and all too recently became a big believer in SCM. I really want to put my site into subversion (that's what I'm using right now, maybe git will come later) but I can't think of the correct way to do it yet. Basically, my repository is set up currently with an 'implementation' directory and a 'resources' directory, with implementation holding what will eventually be published to the live site. I want to be able to preview my site locally without having to upload to the server for obvious reasons. However, to do this I found that I needed to actually install Wordpress locally (not just copy the remote site down to my local box). This was told to me over at Wordpress.org.
This brings up the problem of being able to use SCM with the install because I need to upgrade my local site every now and then but this generates inconsistencies with subversion because it can’t track what’s going on because an external system is messing with it’s repository structure. That just won’t work.
My initial inclination is to try to just SCM my theme information as this is really the only stuff that I ‘own’ while as everything else is really just part of my platform (no different than Apache or PHP, really). However, that’s where my understanding breaks down. How can I selectively SCM only part of that directory structure, and how can I maintain the configuration of Wordpress that I’m on?
Anyway, I’m sure other people have tackled this and the solution is probably applicable to many apps similar to Wordpress (Drupal, phpBB, phpMyAdmin, etc.). So, how do you do it?
It's actually not that hard to do, but I'll break it down into a few suggestions here. What you're describing is more or less a "vendor drop" directory. This is basically where you maintain the code in SVN, but replace the contents with the newer stuff as it comes out.
What you should start with is an empty directory. Set up an SVN repository, and then do an SVN checkout into the empty directory (it will still be empty, except it will get a hidden .svn directory added). Next, install wordpress here normally, and then add its files to svn. You can probably just "svn add *" but be careful, and remove anything you don't want versioned (uploads/temp/cache directories, if applicable). You can also use the svn:ignore property to tell it to ignore certain directories or file types, if you'd like. Run "svn stat" to show you what is going to be checked in, etc, and once all is good, commit it (svn commit) and start working from there. Now you have a base installation of wordpress in SVN.
As you work and make changes, commit them.
When it comes time to upgrade, simply replace wordpress over top of what you have. Make sure when you replace directories, you replace the contents, and not the whole directory itself. You don't want to lose the hidden .svn folder in every folder because that is what will mess subversion up. Do an svn stat and/or svn diff to figure out what's changed, if anything, and mostly what's newly-added. At this point, you can commit again.
To deploy on your production site, you can do an svn export, or do a regular checkout into the web directory. If you do a checkout, be sure to only update when you are ready to deploy.
This is the method I'm testing. It takes some time to setup but you should then (in theory) have a future-proof install:
Installing WordPress The Right Way
Also look at svn:externals for pulling in plugin updates:
Use svn:externals to install WordPress plugins
I think the upgrade part can even be a little easier than that; I do this with the most current version of both 2.5 and 2.6, as well as bleeding-edge trunk revision of WP.
Since Wordpress offers all of their stuff as subversion repositories, getting the current rev of a stable tag is as easy as making the blog directory and then
# svn co http://svn.automattic.com/wordpress/tags/2.6.2/ (replace the current rev here for the first check out).
When an upgrade is available, simply navigate to your blog directory and run
#svn sw http://svn.automattic.com/wordpress/tags/2.6.3/ (or whatever wordpress rev you're updating to)
Then releasing to your production site is just an export, as gregmac mentions
However, I don't think this answers your actual question, which I interpret as "How do I keep my custom stuff in SCM while being able to upgrade Wordpress". Your instainct about what directories to tack is pretty much on target (your own personal blog's stuff - themes, pplugins - will be in wp-content, so you should only need to put that into subversion) but I'm not proficient enough with subversion to tell you how to place the directory into your own repository while still being able to rely on Wordpress's repo for upgrades. My "SCM" for those files on my site is an off-server copy of the wp-content directory.
Maybe from that standpoint gregmac's answer works better for you.
My initial inclination is to try to just SCM my theme information as this is really the only stuff that I ‘own’ while as everything else is really just part of my platform (no different than Apache or PHP, really). However, that’s where my understanding breaks down. How can I selectively SCM only part of that directory structure, and how can I maintain the configuration of Wordpress that I’m on?
That's exactly how I version control my blog. I've found that it works great. Generally, if you're editing WordPress' files, you're doing it wrong and will be in for misery when it's time to upgrade.
To simplify this, I use TortoiseSVN. I navigated to my /wp-content/themes/ directory in Windows Explorer, right clicked on my custom theme's directory, and chose import from the context menu. After importing all of the existing files, I performed a checkout on that directory and everything was set.