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.
Related
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've finished the styling changes on WordPress and I'm ready to move it from MAMP to my domain.
Will this involve any changes to the WordPress files or can I just drag it over to my new domain once I purchased it?
The main start you must make is update your wp-config.php
define('WP_HOME','http://www.mynewdomain.com');
define('WP_SITEURL','http://www.mynewdomain.com');
That way wordpress knows what domain it MUST run from.
The reason you do that is because without this you may not be able to access admin, login, etc etc.
When this is working and you have logged in, go to wp-admin and go to your permalink settings.
Make a NOTE of your settings, then change them to default (and woocommerce settings etc).
Go to your home page and a few others, and notice how messed up your urls look :)
Now go back to permalink settings and restore them (the point of this is to make sure your .htaccess file that wordpress depends upon is set correctly)
Finally, have a look at https://github.com/veloper/WordPress-Domain-Changer to change your sql etc if needed.
note this method is very handy for developers so you just update your wp-config.php for localhost or development or production (not for testing purposes, don't use your local pc. copy it all up to a subdirectory of your hosting partner e.g. http://www.mynewdomain.com/mytestarea. Make sure you use a COPY of the mysql database (never point both to the same database). You now can test on the hosting platform without disturbing the live site or your development causing issues to other people.
It's been a long while for me personally, but you'll want to change the SiteURL via the options menu in wp-admin.
Otherwise, just make sure your MySQL database is exported over, your credentials and user permissions are all setup and those work too.
If you still have problems:
https://codex.wordpress.org/Changing_The_Site_URL
https://codex.wordpress.org/Moving_WordPress
The database has to be updated. What always works for me is that I export the database from phpMyAdmin or MySQL (using mysqldump) and open the exported .sql-file with a text editor, like Sublime Text.
Now you want to find any occurence of your previous URL. Let's say on your dev machine the URL to the index of your Wordpress site is http://localhost:8080/wordpress and you want it to be on a website under https://domain.com you simply do a Find & Replace using that and replace everything with https://domain.com.
For older Wordpress versions you have to update the .htaccess files if you have custom URL's.
You have to make a search replace in your database and replace your local domain ( test.lo ) with the live domain ( test.com ).
To do this you can use the script from here: https://interconnectit.com/products/search-and-replace-for-wordpress-databases/
Add the searchreplacedb2.php file in your route folder and the access test.lo/searchreplacedb2.php and follow the steps there. This will replace your local domain with your live one everywhere in the database.
You can't make a simple search-replace because the local domain might be serialized in some fields in the database, and a simple search-replace will not replace those.
I have a Wordpress site I need to clone for testing purposes. I used Open-Shift to host the scratch site that I will be working on. As for cloning, I am using the WP Clone plugin. When I create a backup file on the real site, it works, and then I paste the URL on the restore for the scratch site. When I go to my scratch site however, none of the content is their, and I have to re-setup Wordpress. Is there another, better, more reliable way to clone a Wordpress site, or am I doing something wrong?
I have used WP-Clone quite a bit, and unfortunately in this scenario, it is the most solid plugin I have found. If you want to go the same route you have been (ie: use a plugin)...you have multiple options. You could check out:
https://wordpress.org/plugins/all-in-one-wp-migration/
And if you don't mind a little bit of complexity - the most comprehensive solution is probably more like:
https://wordpress.org/plugins/duplicator/
I hope that helps. Sometimes those types of plugins can be a little buggy - and it is still a good idea to scan your database to make sure the information was transferred correctly.
Also, have you checked your wp-config file to make sure it is pointing at the correct database on the new site? Sometimes that requires a manual change, as they differ.
Cheers.
I have a live site built in Wordpress at www.site.com/name1.
The client wants a new theme. I've heavily modified the current theme with custom code and will need to do so with the new theme, all without interrupting the live site, so this wont be as simple as moving the site from one theme to another. Therefore I think I need to create a duplicate of the site at www.site.com/name2 because the content will all be the same. Doing this will give me a place to work on the redesign.
What is the best way to go about doing this? Should I have both use the same DB or not? When I get ready to go live should i simple redirect the domain to /name2 or move everything at /name2 to /name1?
Any help is appreciated.
Thanks,
Chris
If you want the same Data you can use the same DB but there is somes Options Tables dans Meta tables in the Wordpress DB, then if you change parameters on one site it will affect the other.
If you just recode the Theme without touching anything in the configuration you can use the same DB to test your theme with valid datas, but if you think you'll have to change paramaters i would prefer duplicate the Production DB to a Test DB to secure the production Website.
When you go live you'll just have to move your theme to the production website and copy your Option and Meta Tables.
If you're at a point where you're having clients, you should definitely develop locally. This will free you from the trouble of mistakingly messing up the production site.
Install Apache, MySQL and PHP on your own machine.
Copy database and files from production.
Change anything you'd like without exposing it to the Internet.
Upload your new, tailor-suited theme to production when it's ready to go live.
It seems that using the define('RELOCATE') command is a convenient tool to perform site development using a local database and webserver, then to upload into production. Otherwise, its necessary to perform SQL REPLACE commands to update all the URLs in the posts, media and other content.
The Wordpress codex specifically states that it must be removed, but occasionally after removing, the links revert back to the dev server. Is there a reason for removal? it doesn't seem that security should be the issue, perhaps performance?
Thanks,
Jonathan
The reason you remove it is because define('RELOCATE',true); will point every visitor of your site to the admin login.
If you are still getting re-directed to the dev server then you need to re-configure your database.