Have to say, I am surprised there are only 6 likes for this tutorial. I'm completely new to the web development scene and have zero code skills whatsoever. I have been through a multitude of different tutorials on backing up and cloning websites and without doubt this is by far and away the most comprehensive and excellent I have come across. Infact I went through the tutorial in detail and wrote it all out step by step. Takes a bit of getting through but now I have this end of things down pat and I can't thank you enough for putting your time into it. Now I can do it like a pro despite being a beginner. Most of the other back up and clone tutorials involve using back up plugins but, despite the bit effort involved, being able to do it all manually is really the bees knees. Thanks again. Regards Tommy from Dublin.
Hi Tommy - Thanks for the feedback. Indeed it is best to be able to back up manually. Backup plugins have their place but these can sometimes stop working. I use WP Migrate DB (free) to not only download a zipped .SQL file of my database from within the WordPress dashboard but change all the URLs too. This is a fairly lightweight plugin and makes things a bit quicker but if it ever stopped working I would fall back on the steps outlined in the tutorial. I've said a bit more about backing up to a localhost (WAMP in my case) here: www.smallbizgeek.co.uk/wordpress-localhost/
Thank you. Very useful info. In addition to the steps you have given, I also had to go to wp-admin->Settings->Permalink and click on "Save Changes" to rebuild permalinks. Without this step, only the hompage was loading properly but none of the other pages.
thank you. it was a very helpful video. what i dont understand is, why people do not use clone sites on the wamp. it eleminates all risks. you can try and see any change on your local first and then proceed on web if you like.
I sometimes do make changes directly on the live website - if it's just very basic HTML. I'm experienced enough now that I will indeed do it on the live site because sometimes, backing up is a hassle. I back up and do tests/experiments if there's a huge redevelopment. Otherwise, constant iterations and improvements directly on the site can work fine.
