Best way to duplicate a wordpress site for staging purposes?

[NoahsDad]

I want to make some changes to my Wordpress site, and want to somehow set up a live staging area. Does anyone know of a good way to do this?

I want all of the same content there I just want to be able to make changes to it and try it all out before going live. Any thoughts on this?

Also I want to be sure the staging site doesn't get indexed since it will be a complete duplicate of my existing site.

Thanks!

[BedeFahey]

Howdy,

I've recently become a fan of WPengine for this reason - they've got some neat staging features, including, I believe, being able to stage changes, check them out, and push them live. But, that would probably require you to change hosting.

That said, here's how I tend to move sites from development to production (or production to development). Someone who knows more might have some changes or suggestions, or an easier way, but this is what works for me:

1. Install WordPress somewhere. Make sure its noindexed and/or password protect the directory.

2. Download a copy of your wp-content folder from your existing site (this will pull all of your themes, plugins, etc.)

3. Export a copy of your wordpress database (how to here: http://codex.wordpress.org/Backing_Up_Your_Database)

4. Open up your database in a text editor (I like Notepad++) and locate the first instance of your old domain name with the new one and then use find and replace to switch out all instances of the old domain name for the new one e.g. if it's noahsdad.com/ and you're moving to dev.noahsdad.com/ use find and replace to switch all occurances of noahsdad.com/ to dev.noahsdad.com/. Be careful to look at trailing slashes etc.

5. Upload your wp-content file to the new wordpress install. Overwrite the old one.

6. Open the database for the fresh WP install using PHPmyadmin (or the equivalent, on your server). Import the database that you conducted the search/replace on.

The advantage of uploading the wp-content folders and then then database is that the Database changes while the files for plugins etc. are already in place. Therefore, it should retain many of the plugin settings so you won't get any serious weirdness due to an important plugin not working.

Here's a guide that I like http://wpmu.org/migrating-wordpress-to-a-new-server/. It doesn't conform exactly to the method I use (they upload the database first), and it has some extra stuff in it like updating your nameservers which you should ignore, but it covers the database part pretty nicely.

Hope this helps.

Bede

[NoahsDad]

Thanks so much. I actually don't need any other staff people to see it. I just want some designers in other parts of the U.S. to see it.

The main this is how to duplicate it. Including all of the images, database, etc.

I've never done anything like this before.

Thanks.

[ColumK]

OK, then use the subdomain, you can then set up with dreamweaver a check in/out system for your staff which stops people editing the same files etc. On save/put you can set it to upload it to your testing server (subdomain). you would then be able to view this from any machine in your office (i would also still block all IPs on that subdomain except for your office). Once happy you can then either upload the specific files then to the main server, or do a release every evening/other evening after testing etc.

[NoahsDad]

I'm actually on a mac.

If I install it locally on my mac I can't let other people see it unless they are looking at my computer, correct?

I have other domains...would be better to use one of those, or to use a subdomain?

Thanks.

[Mark_Ginsberg]

If you're on Windows, you can locally install xampp on your machine, and then install wordpress locally.

Or you can do what columK suggests and install it on a subdomain on your site. Here is info from wordpress about moving domains - you can also install a plugin to do this - I've used Wordpress Move in the past

Once you've set up the new site, go to the settings section, reading, and then click the checkbox to discourage search engines from reading the testing site - that will modify the robots.txt to block search engines.

Good luck!

Mark

[NoahsDad]

That's what I need help trying to create. I also want the staging site to be a duplicate of the existing site, but there so much content I can't do a simple import / export through Wodpress's admin panel...

[ColumK]

Why not create a subdomain that only your office IP can view? You can then test as much as you like without worrying about other people viewing it or Google.