Backup and migrate Local copy of WordPress site

  • Hello Forum members,

    I’m looking for information on how to backup a locally installed WordPress site.

    So here’s the setup I am running Apache 2.4 installed on a Window 7 machine. I have PHP 5.5.36 and MySQL 5 installed independently I also have phpmyadmin installed and as far as I know all the necessary extensions are set in apache’s “httpd.conf” file In fact everything appears to be working fine. WordPresss is running just fine as far as I can tell. Localhost answers to the browser request PHPMyAdmin works just fine, manages and creates databases just fine. Everything is working. So what I need to do is create a backup of my WordPress development site and the database for that site.

    Note: the htdocs folder has a number of sites in it, a couple of them are in fact WordPress sites.

    When it’s all said and done I want to be able to keep that backup on a thumb drive and also on my NAS (“network attached storage”)

    So in the event of a catastrophic crash of my desktop I can still move my WordPress site up to my Hostgator hosted website.

    Can anyone point me to information on creating these backups? I am hoping to find information that is straight forward and simple like copy & paste simple.

    Everything I see when searching Google seems to start with the words WAMP XAMP or some other such non-sense. In other words; Isn’t there an approach that is simply copy this folder to here and this DB file to this other place and then to move them to a live server do this and this…

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

  • What you want is quite simple, it involves a few stages, since you already have a web server (Apache) and database (mySQL) and PHP engine running you have no need for WAMP/XAMP etc, most people use these packages to deliver the above bundle of software and servers.

    A) you don’t really want to copy the files your database server is using to manage your databases, this is not a productive approach. What you do want is a dump of the data and configuration of your database in SQL format so that it can be loaded into a database on any database server you choose. You use phpmyadmin to do this most conveniently, login to it, choose your database and then choose the EXPORT tab acros the top, choose advanced options, put the data into the file name of the backup, select all tables, most of the other options are probably god but check what they are and change any you need to. This will give you a big file that can reconstruct your datbase, copy it to your thumbdrive and NAS.

    B) You want a copy of all the files, even the hidden ones in your wbeserver website root directory and all nested in it. Copy these to your thumbdrive and NAS too, you may want to put them into a ZIP archive.

    Depending upon just how your site is configured in term of website names etc, you may run into some of the issues discussed here:
    https://codex.www.ads-software.com/Moving_WordPress

    What you have created above is steps A and B will give you a snapshot of your website, many websites have ongoing changes and additions, managing ongoing backups of these changes is something you need to address.

    Thread Starter ronc0011

    (@ronc0011)

    Thank you Ross,

    I’m beginning the process of finding my way through all of this.

    So here’s what I’m starting with, I have a site I’m developing on my desktop machine. I will be moving this site to a Hostgator Shared Hosting account The Hostgator site presently has a folder “my-site.com” I have built my development site in a folder called “my-site”.

    I tried changing the folder name on the local machine to “my-site.com” and of course it broke the site.

    I’m assuming this is because of database entries created when WordPress was first installed

    So this is my question; what DB values do I need to find and change to fix this.

    The change of directory name from “my-site” to “my-site.com” could require changes to either the apache configuration, or the WordPress settings.
    Can you tell us what your WordPress settings are for “site address” and “WordPress address”, these are at the top of the tab: settings > general

    I tried changing the folder name on the local machine to “my-site.com” and of course it broke the site.

    I am afraid that “broke” is an unhelpful description of how a website fails to work. For instance did it give a 404 error ? Did it show text but no images or styling ? Was there a WordPress error ? Database connection error ? If you provide the details we can help, for “broke” it is harder.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
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