How to clone site for private changes?

  • Wimbledon

    (@wimbledon)


    13 years, 6 months ago

    My first WordPress site is due for a much improved theme.

    What I’d like to do is export the site somehow to another domain (or locally on my computer) so that I can make extensive changes to the theme while visitors to the live site do not see any changes.

    I want to make some radical theme changes, test them, and then once I’m satisfied upload that theme file onto the live site.

    How do I develop privately with all my content while still maintaining the live site?

    I’m sure this is a common need so can anyone point me to tutorials online or keywords I should search for?

    Thank you.

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
  • vtxyzzy

    (@vtxyzzy)

    13 years, 6 months ago

    This article in the Codex, Moving WordPress, should help.

    Thread Starter Wimbledon

    (@wimbledon)

    13 years, 6 months ago

    Thank you.

    According to that article, if I want to move the site to another domain on the server than I have to change the blog URIs.

    Since I just want to copy the blog to another (private) domain for development, how do I do this without affecting the original site? While I take a few weeks to work on the new theme for the site, I still want my readers to see the live site as it is now.

    Thread Starter Wimbledon

    (@wimbledon)

    13 years, 6 months ago

    Thank you.

    According to that article, if I want to move the site to another domain on the server than I have to change the blog URIs.

    Since I just want to copy the blog to another (private) domain for development, how do I do this without affecting the original site? While I take a few weeks to work on the new theme for the site, I still want my readers to see the live site as it is now.

    vtxyzzy

    (@vtxyzzy)

    13 years, 6 months ago

    There is a section in that article titled ‘If You Want Your Old Blog To Still Work’. Is that what you need?

    Thread Starter Wimbledon

    (@wimbledon)

    13 years, 6 months ago

    Those instructions require me to change the URLs of the original blog to the address of the new blog. I believe that I do not want to do this as the export of the data in my case will only be temporary, and not a permanent move.

    vtxyzzy

    (@vtxyzzy)

    13 years, 6 months ago

    If you read the instructions further down, you will see Part B – Restoring your old blog. Remember, that section of the article is ‘If You Want You Old Blog To Still Work’!!

    Your other alternative is to use ftp to copy your complete wp-content folder to the new site and manually change all the occurrences of the old blog url to the new one. Then use phpMyAdmin to dump out your old database, manually change all the old urls to the new one and import it into the new database with phpMyAdmin. This is the procedure I use to copy my live sites to my local PC for testing. It works, but requires a lot more detailed knowledge of the contents of the folders and the database.

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
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