Localhost updating WP site immediately

  • I’m a newbie at WordPress and I’ve managed to screw it up. Here’s what happened: I’ve been tasked with revising the website for our homeowner’s association and wanted to get started using XAMPP to try new thing. I decided that the easiest way would be to use Updraft Plus to backup the existing site and then import the backup into the XAMPP site. Bad move.

    Now whenever I make a change in XAMPP it’s immediately reflected on the live site thereby negating my ability to experiment.

    To make matters worst our site is hosted by a company that will not allow me to FTP in the site server.

    Any help in resolving this problem would be greatly appreciated.

    • This topic was modified 5 years, 3 months ago by James Huff. Reason: moved to Locahost Installs forum
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  • Are you sure it caused by the backup plugin? If that’s really the case, I’d first deactivate the plugin and then contact hosting provider asking them to help restore the whole site to its previous stage (all hosting providers should keep some form of backups).

    If the damage is too small and you remember what changes need to be reversed, just make use of the plugin, redo the site in your local back to the previous stage of the live site.

    Moderator bcworkz

    (@bcworkz)

    You need to edit your local wp-config.php’s DB credentials to lead to your XAMPP DB instead of the production site’s DB. The XAMPP DB host is “localhost”. You probably don’t have any data there yet, so run /wp-admin/install.php to setup something for WP to run on. Then run the Updraft restore option for the DB backup file again from your XAMPP installation. I believe this should install all the production data onto your local DB.

    Be mindful about changes to the DB, they are not synced. If the production site gets new posts and your local site gets different new posts, copying your DB to production will cause the production’s new posts to be lost.

    I hope you at least have some kind of file management access to production files if not FTP. It’s risky to manage a site without some kind of file access, even if it’s a hosting account’s file manager, though it’s woefully inadequate for significant file management tasks.

    Additionally, the fact you could update the production DB from your local computer is a little disconcerting unless special measures like VPN were put in place to allow it. Usually only whitelisted computers are allowed to remotely access DBs. Where else is security lax? I urge you to keep good regular backups of your site and perhaps consider moving to a proper, commercial host. IME, privately run web servers have never gone well.

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
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