LyleChamney

To clarify a few things:

transfer my wordpress

Does this mean you have a WP site hosted online somewhere, such as GoDaddy, HostGator, Bluehost, etc., and you want to copy it to your own computer to use DW to edit?

If so, that vid is not for your situation, other than setting up MAMP.

And that’s another question: Are you using a Mac and have you installed MAMP and per the vid?

If so, are you able to successfully start the MAMP servers and access the MAMP Start page (as in the vid, although that vid is using an earlier version of MAMP)?

If you answered ‘Yes’ to these, then DW is not your issue and they would never be a place to go for support in this matter at the moment; it is purely up to you and getting your live site copied to your local web server (MAMP?).

And if this is in fact the situation, then you can check this link for moving a WP site:

http://codex.wordpress.org/Moving_WordPress

These are the steps you need to do to copy a live site to a local MAMP environment:

– install MAMP using the default settings

Live Site:

– export the database
– download the complete WP installation (ZIP the files if your hosting file manager provides this and just download the ZIP)

Local in MAMP:

– create a new folder in Applications/MAMP/htdocs and name it wordpress
– move the downloaded site files here or unZIP the downloaded site ZIP here
– edit the wp-config.php file now in this location with the following values:

NOTE: use a plain text editor such as Text Wrangler to do so (or open it in DW)

— DB_NAME: wordpress
— DB_USER: root
— DB_PASSWORD: root
— DB_HOST: localhost (or 127.0.0.1)

– from the MAMP Start page, select phpMyAdmin from the Tools menu
– create a new, empty database named wordpress
– select this newly created DB from the list on the left and click the import Tab; select the downloaded export file (.SQL extension) and click GO
– you should receive a message that the import was successful
– expand the list for your DB so you can see the wp_options table and select it
– find and edit the siteurl and home fields with your local address:

http://localhost:8888/wordpress

– you should now be able to log into your local copy with:

http://localhost:8888/wordpress/wp-admin or
http://localhost:8888/wordpress/wp-login.php

Once logged in, install and run this plugin to update the rest of the URLs and links:

http://wordpress.org/plugins/velvet-blues-update-urls/

— select all options EXCEPT the last one (GUID)

Once that is done, go to:

Settings > Permalinks and Save.

Once this is all done, THEN you can start with using DW to edit and skip ahead in the vid to ~06:23 🙂

However, the vid shows editing the theme files directly, when best practices are that you should first create a child theme of the active theme and make your edits there. But that is another topic that you can search the WP Codex for 🙂

Your document root for a default XAMPP installation on OS X Yosemite is:

Applications/XAMPP/htdocs

So, you would have your first site in:

Applications/XAMPP/htdocs/wordpress

And if you wanted another local WP site, you would create a new folder in Applications/XAMPP/htdocs and place a the contents of a fresh copy of the unZIPPED WP download package (the contents of the resulting wordpress folder) into it, e.g.:

Applications/XAMPP/htdocs/wordpress2

You also need to use phpMyAdmin to create a new, empty database for this new site, e.g. also name it wordpress2, then start the install for this second site with:

http://localhost/wordpress2

Repeat as required for however many sites you want 🙂

I thought “multisite” would be the only way to get three different sites running under one wordpress installation. Or am I wrong there?

You are correct, IF you want multiple, SIMILAR, ‘connected’ sites with one WP install. But ‘multisite’ is NOT what you want if you need 3 (or however many) SEPARATE and UNIQUE WP sites 🙂

I have put in a lot of work and want to regain control.
I’m using the Customizr and child theme and a few WP plugins

That means then that you have already been able to log into the WP Admin area. As you mention, you should be able to access the site login with:

http://localhost/wordpress/wp-admin or

http://localhost/wordpress/wp-login.php

Could I just navigate to the wp-content/themes using Windows Explorer and rename the theme directory?

Yes

would I lose all the work I have put in so far?

No

What you see in phpMyAdmin for the port number, 8889, is the MAMP default port number for the MySQL server. You do not require this for any ‘normal’ operation of MAMP 🙂

If your second and current install of MAMP is a default one, that is, you have not made any changes to the MAMP Preferences (port numbers and document root), then you should still be fine.

When installing any ‘script’ (WordPress, Joomla!, eFront, etc.) into a local server (MAMP), it is best practices to give them their own folder within the document root, which in the case of a default MAMP install, is:

Applications/MAMP/htdocs

So even if you did put your first WP install directly in there, don’t worry about it; just make sure that any subsequent ones have their files in a separate folder, e.g.:

Applications/MAMP/htdocs/wordpress2

If you get the MAMP Start Page when you enter:

http://localhost:8888 then you do not have the WP files in the document root and I would guess that they would be in:

Applications/MAMP/htdocs/wordpress

If you DO get the WP install screen (or the site if you went through the install), then fine, just use that for now. The log in screen is then:

http://localhost:8888/wp-admin or http://localhost:8888/wp-login.php

.and then for whatever reason, local installs of WordPress apparently need a server database to already exist so they can find the place to put the database

This works the same way on hosted sites as well 🙂

If you have a hosting account that supports more than one ‘database’, then to set up another WP site on that account, you have to first use the hosting account’s database tool (on a lot of hosting accounts, it’s the same phpMyAdmin which is in the popular cPanel <brand name> hosting control panel) to create the new, empty database into which the WP installer will populate the required tables; same scenario as any local install.

If you check the Start Page of MAMP, it says right there that the default MySQL User and Password are both root 🙂

These are the default values out of the box. And if you leave all the defaults set as installed (Apache port = 8888 and document root is Applications/MAMP/htdocs) then everything works ‘splendidly’ 🙂

Although on can install a site directly in the document root, it is generally advised not to do so as it clutters up the directory. Best practice is to have your sites in their own folder within /htdocs.

For example, if you placed your WP files in a folder named wordpress within /htdocs, you would then access it with:

http://localhost:8888/wordpress

To sum up:

– leave the defaults as installed for MAMP
– place your site files in a folder within /htdocs

Hope this helps anyone else having these sort of issues and chances are we won’t see you here with these questions 🙂

I am of a similar ilk; like to design but do not like to code 🙂

That’s why I switched to WordPress in 2010 when they released version 3.0.

My current ‘arsenal’ is:

– Genesis framework (theme framework) – commercial
– Dynamik Website Builder (theme layout – requires Genesis) – commercial
– Beaver Builder (page/post content layout) – free and commercial versions

Build, design and edit just about anything without coding … but with just a bit, there’s ‘no limit’ 🙂

I am in no way affiliated with any of the products mentioned, just that after trying a substantial number of the tools that are out there, this combo is what works best for me … until the ‘next one’ comes out! 🙂

And for content creation (writing and adding images) one can use ‘offline’ tools such as Windows Live Writer (Windows) and MarsEdit (Mac OS). I use these two to create posts when I don’t have a net connection and/or don’t want to fiddle around logging into the admin dashboard of the site.