I have a website running on a Wordpress theme. We have made many custom edits of the theme which now breaks when we turn on mobile version. We need to setup a test environment of the site so we can debug it. Is it best to setup a copy of the site as a subdomain, subfolder or do it locally. What is best practice. Thanks.
Best way would be a local setup. But if you don't want to configure to much to test it on your mobile device, you should setup a second installation on your server and make it available via a subdomain. (And of course, if it's on a live server, create a password protection to make it unseen for public eyes.)
Related
Building a new website without affecting the current website (wordpress) until finished? Concerned about google web crawling, seo, ssl certificates, wordpress config, etc.
I was advised to create a new subdomain and build the new website there but I have concerns about this approach. After your build your new site (wordpress) on the newly created subdomain how do you redirect the main domain to that subdomain and not break google's web crawling or SSL certificates or anything else?
Building and testing separately from the current site is always the best approach. A separate development environment is always preferable, if possible. This also allows you to test upgrades and changes in future before making them on the live site and risking an error.
Whether you have a separate environment or not, there are 2 ways you can build the site separately from the current site:
1. Build in a separate location and then migrate the installation to the current hosting when its ready.
This is a common approach but it is quite tricky if you try to do it manually - a common question here is how to fix a broken site after a manual migration.
My recommendation is to use a plugin that is designed to do it all for you. You can have the site moved and running perfectly in minutes without all the hassle. I use the free Duplicator plugin, but there are others.
See how to migrate a Wordpress site in 4 quick & easy steps
2. Build in a subfolder of the current website and switch it to run from the root domain
An alternative option is to build it in a sub folder (a subdomain will not work for this approach). When you're ready, it just takes a few steps to make it run from the root domain without moving anything.
Note that this is then your live site, so you don't have this as a copy for testing upgrades in future.
See how to set up WP that's installed in a subfolder so that it runs from the root domain
Finally - whichever approach you take, if your new urls are different from the current site, you should set up 301 redirects so that both your users and Google can find the corresponding pages and it doesn't hurt your Google ranking.
I've transferred my database and entire Wordpress file structure over to the live site, but the live site is still looking for all its resources at localhost:8888/.
I looked back on what I did when getting started and I edited my gulpfile.js to include
var browserSyncOptions = {
proxy: 'localhost:8888',
notify: false
};
Thinking this was the issue, I switched it to proxy: $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'], but still no luck. Any ideas for what I may be doing wrong?
Unfortunately I haven't been able to find a single bit of information about deploying an understrap themed site. Here are the docs for the theme though: https://understrap.com/demos/core/wp-content/themes/core-understrap/docs/.
I've transferred my database and entire Wordpress file structure over to the live site, but the live site is still looking for all its resources at localhost:8888/.
That is an easy to way to get into live server maintenance hell. UnderStrap is a unique theme package because it has strong npm dependencies running in the back-end that are appropriate for localhost development builds. For that reason, Here is an alternative approach I recommend instead.
Install a clean vanilla version of WordPress on your live server.
Install and activate UnderStrap.zip on your live server through wp-admin.
Import/Export your posts and pages from your local site, onto the live site. Add all media images. Adjust your settings, install your plugins, and clear your cache.
Now use the file manager in your C-Panel to only upload all modified theme files from your localhost to your live server.
Test your site, then go live.
That is more of a manual process, but it has its benefits. For one, you learn and see what each step looks like, you push up only what you need, you don't have localhost decencies running on your live site and the database is 100% targeted on live site content.
If you can access the wp-admin of your live site there's a great plugin called Velvet Blues Update URLs that you can install.
Install it, go to Tools > Update URLs and enter the localhost address and then the live site address.
Always works great for me.
Many developers have done this process by running its gulp dist when processing deployment. It will create dist folder which you can upload on the server. It contains all necessary files that supports running the scss. So try to use also the gulp dist-product as a "product" that the theme can be published and downloaded in the near future.
Trying to figure the best way to develop on plesk.
I would like to develop my wordpress website on a temporary url, and attach the production domain only when I am done developing.
From some reason I'm getting various dns errors, saw a guide referring to change of hosts file but it dosent seem like the perfect solution to me.
Any tips?
You may create the clone of your WP instance (staging) and use Plesk Git extension for developing this staging WP site. After making all necessary changes on staging non-public clone you can publish it to a production domain to make it publicly available.
I have done a blog in mamp and would like to push into hostgator. Must i recreate everything in hostgator like Installing Wordpress on Hostgator. Is there any way i could just push my stuff straight into hostgator without redoing everything in hostgator. Need some suggestion.. Thanks..
It's quite easy to deploy a local version of Wordpress to a live server. First of all, you are right, I would not bother installing a clean copy of Wordpress on your server, you'd then have to totally rebuild the site.
What you need to do is;
FTP all your files from your local machine to the server.
Transfer the whole database from local phpmyadmin to a new database on the server
Change the database connection details in wp-config.php
Make any necessary changes to your default Wordpress .htaccess. What I mean here is that your MAMP site probably isn't in the root but your live site probably will be. If you have SEO permalinks set up then you would remove the Mamp subdirectory from the rewrite rule and the base in the .htaccess. Your host might also require you to add rules here (ie specifying which version of PHP to use etc). You could always install Wordpress using their installer to see if they add any special rules themselves.
All easy so far - now comes my tip. Moving Wordpress databases from your local development environment to live can be a massive pain because Wordpress (and lots of plugin/theme developers) use serialized arrays to store data. So if you do a find-and-replace on the database to replace your old url with the new one, you will disable lots of things like config settings and widgets (text widgets specifically, but there's loads of stuff you end up having to recreate).
Download this file;
http://interconnectit.com/124/search-and-replace-for-wordpress-databases/
and upload it to the server and access it directly in your browser. Run through the quick form and perform a serialized array-friendly find and replace on your database urls. Job done. Good luck.
I've installed and tested Wordpress configurations on my home server which I use as my test server.
Is it possible to upload everything, including Wordpress, from my home web server to my hosting account so it will work instantly there?
Of course I need to change the database name, password, but that's about it.
thanks!
http://codex.wordpress.org/Moving_WordPress
Nike's link is good, but also be aware they you may need to take extra steps when moving certain plugins, like CformsII, you will have to resetup your Widgets if you use any, and be sure to check your .htaccess file for any changes that you may have to make if you are using permalinks.
For files, you should be able to upload your themes and plugins to the web host.
For the database, you can go into your local setup, Admin->Tools->Export. This will export your local WP settings, posts, pages, etc to a file.
Install WP on your host, then go to Admin->Tools->Import. Select the file from the previous step. Your hosted WP should now be the same as your local copy.