Duplicate an entire Wordpress site in the same domain - wordpress

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.

Related

wordpress edit theme offline

I have a Wordpress-theme-based web published on the net, uploaded in a hosting.
I have to edit/simplify/modify the whole page, offline, on local for example.
While I make the changes offline, the page (an online magazine) has to keep online, as it is, until I publish the new version.
I have to be able to show the changes online, without affecting the original until the end.
What is a good way to do the whole process? Thank you very much.
Make offline server by installing eg. XAMPP.
Copy files, and export database from online to local,
Modify wp-config.php to match local database settings
Modify theme offline
Upload theme to online FTP when work is done
Make sure if changes you made are only in wp-content/themes/theme_name files - not in database content. If not, you will have to sync databases.
You can make the same to work online by cloning your WP to eg. subdomain, then protect it by htpasswd, to prevent unauthorised access.
I assume you mean with the same content?
One way is to make a copy of the main database (possibly refresh it now and then) for a second install online, with same plugins, settings etc.
Another way (bit riskier, but would give realtime sameness) would be to have a demo install on the same server that shares the same database: https://codex.wordpress.org/Editing_wp-config.php#table_prefix. I'd suggest with a custom user and usermeta where NO ONE has update privileges to avoid updates to the main site https://codex.wordpress.org/Editing_wp-config.php#Custom_User_and_Usermeta_Tables

How do I copy a woocommerce application from live server to localhost

I am new to WordPress. I have a WordPress woocommerce application, which I want to copy to local server.
But all the links still point to the same server. E.g. when I login it takes me to live website as the action target is sth like : www.example.com/wp-login.php.
How to change all links to point to local servers so that I can develop locally.
I have done the same with WP CLONE Plugin.
https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-clone-by-wp-academy/
Try this.
WordPress has absolute links inside its database, i.e. http://yoursite.org. To make site functional on another domain or localserver you have to change all links inside database. Any manual manipulation with database may corrupt it.
The robust way to move your site is usage of Duplicator plugin.
Easiest way is to use WP All in One plugin, you export whole wordpress and woocommerce, and only thing you need to change when you set it to localhost are permalinks

How to manually back up wordpress website

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!

Two Wordpress Installations on the Exact Same Database?

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.

How to maintain your development website vs. production website in WordPress?

In a wordpress installation we want to have our main site, and a staging site separated and different. Where in the admin interface you separate your staging area?
Let's say:
for production you will have: http://www.yourdomain.com/
but for staging we want to have: http://www.yourdomain.com/staging
Staging is the website that will be in production next.
Any ideas?
With Wordpress 3.0+ you might be able to create a network of sites or install multiple sites with an older version of Wordpress. The catch is I don't know of an easy way of moving the staging to production. I'm not entirely sure that will do what you want, but you may want to look into it.
Personally I'd think you'd probably be better off keeping your staging and production sites on 2 different servers and just do a copy over when you move to production.
I don't know of any instant, simple answers, but have you seen this article in the Wordpress support forum? It has some informed discussion and at-least partial solutions:
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/one-wpseveral-servers
If your staging site doesn't need any database modification, or custom forms/widgets for the backend, you can create a new theme, and test it in the preview mode. When done, you can switch the theme to the new one!

Resources