WordPress Pages Not Showing After Site Copy To Locahost

Have a look and make sure that the menu has been properly “duplicated”. Sometimes it can become “unhooked” when moving a site.

Is that just in the menu settings or should I check another place as well?

Check here:

Appearance > Menus

If you had your pages set up here and used a “Custom Menu” they should be listed under Menu Structure. Make sure that the appropriate check box is ticked in the Menu Settings > Theme location at the bottom: Primary or Secondary depending upon how you had it set up.

Yeah all the menus mirror that of the live site so its not that. Any other suggestions?

This is one of the reasons I do not use a plugin to move my WP sites; if something doesn’t work, then where do you start looking.

I always do a manual move, so perhaps try this:

Live Site:

– export the database
– ZIP the contents of the site and download (or if the live site does not support ZIP ((archiving, compression, etc.)) then use FTP to download)

Local Site:
– use phpMyAdmin to create a new, empty database
– import the exported database .sql file
– edit the siteurl and home fields in the wp-options table with the new location URL:

— https://localhost – if it will be in the root of the local server
— https://localhost/folder_name – if in a folder in the local server web root

– unZIP or move the downloaded site files to the desired location
– edit the wp-config.php file there with the local database connection credentials (use Notepad or equivalent to do so)
– log into the local site Dashboard and install and run this plugin:

https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/velvet-blues-update-urls/

— select all options EXCEPT the last one (GUID)

– go to Settings > Permalinks and just re-save

Done ??

I know this may sound like a silly question, but do I need to have wordpress installed first?

No such thing as “silly” questions … just silly answers! LOL ??

If you followed the above steps, you just “installed” WordPress ??

Without getting into the complexities of WordPress multisite (or previously Multi User), for each individual WordPress powered site, there are two basic components: the WordPress files and the database.

The additions to each site that the user makes are stored in both the database (posts, pages, settings, etc.) and in the sub folders in wp-content, namely plugins, themes and uploads. All of this makes up “WordPress”.

OK thats what I thought regarding the installation. Now, initially I did try to do everything without the help of a plugin. However, I could never get it to work right, so i though I may be doing something wrong. That’s when I decided to use a plugin.

So I followed your instructions which is basically what I have been doing several times however, the site still refuses to load right. Now the interesting thing was that for a while I was getting the cannot connect to database error message. So I checked and rechecked the wp-config.php settings and they were set to the correct database.

Now I do have a couple plugins that a suspect may be causing some issues like wp-security, but I have disabled them in the plugins folder. The other interesting thing is that if I set the permalink structure to exactly the way my live site is set I get a 404 not found message, however if I set it to the default post ID setting I at least get a blank page. I will trying again removing all the content, and following your instructions.

Not sure what else to suggest as this is the method I have successfully used many times.

One thing that comes to mind now that you mention some plugins may be affecting this, is to deactivate them on the live site before exporting the database as the settings may be stored there and if so are usually done so as serialized strings, making them difficult to change directly.

Still no joy. I cant get the page content to show up. I dont understand whats going on here.