Hi guys, first time user of Local and I just have a couple of queries that I am hopeful one of you friendly peeps can answer.
I have just migrated over to Flywheel. Still waiting for domain names to properly propagate before my site is live.
Ok, I have installed Local and (finally) downloaded a full copy of my live site to my local machine.
Question 1: If I make changes to my local version of the site and then I want those changes to appear live, I obviously use the Push To Flywheel option. Does this push the entire site again, or just the changes that I have done?
Question 2: Wordpress will hardcode any links that I make on the local site… are links etc changed to their proper URL once pushed live?
My apologies for the newbieness kind of questions, but I hope someone can assist!
Thank you!
JR
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Hey @Hellblazer,
firstly, welcome to the awesome world of Flywheel, and the Local community!
Secondly, let’s see if we can get these questions answered for you:
- Yes use the Push to Flywheel option - This does, in fact, push the enitre site, not just any changes. As such the database and files will be overwritten. Vice versa when you Pull to Local.
- By hardcoded I will assume you don’t mean what I think fo as hard-coded, and instead, you mean URLs that are stored from the DB, such as posts, domain, content, images etc and not hardcoded URLs in the CSS. If I am correct in my assumption there, then yes, all URL’s are searched for and replaced in your database, when pushing to the live site. You shouldn’t need to do anything.
And please, don’t apologise, we’re happy bunch fo people here in this community and even at Flywheel, so we’re always super happy to help where we can 
If there is anything else, please do let us know.
Otherwise, have a great day,
Chris 
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Cheers Chris, thank you for the response. As I am a photography based site with a veritable ton of images, the site comes close to 8GB so it is going to be a bit of a pain pushing it all back up the pipe again. But, I’ll deal with it!
I’ll be streamlining the hell out of it whilst working on it locally so hopefully I can downsize it somewhat.
Again, thank you for your assistance.
JR
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The fact that Local will push up the entire DB and overwrite what is on the Flywheel server can be a little surprising in a couple of instances.
Since you are doing a photography site – are you selling anything on it, or is it just a portfolio site?
The reason I ask is that if you are doing ecommerce, then there are transactions that are happening on the server, but are not happening on your local machine. Because of this, when you try to push the Local version up to the server, you would be losing those transactions! This sort of thing can happen in other areas if the site is more dynamic – for example, if people are commenting on a post, then the new comments won’t be reflected in your local site.
As a rule of thumb, I try to do most of the content related things (adding posts, uploading images, managing media, etc) on the actual live site – think of that as the single source of truth.
I turn to Local when I want to make deeper changes to the site itself – theme updates, testing plugins, etc. When I do this, I pull the live site down, test out a new plugin, or make changes to the theme. When I’m satisfied that everything is good, then I’ll make those changes on the live site.
Hope that helps get you thinking about the larger workflow – and welcome to the community!
– Ben
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Hey Ben, thank you for your reply. Yes, being a photography based site, it does generate some sales etc so that is good to know that the local version of the site doesn’t pull all transactions etc.
I will definitely have to rethink my strategy of doing updates now. Hmmmm…
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I know this is a little nit-picky – but Local will download all the transactions at that specific point in time.
The issue is that you might be working on the local site, even for as little as a minute. If an order comes in during that window of time – it will only exist on the live site.
It’s a small distinction, but I hope it helps you think about your workflow!
– Ben
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Hi Ben, it’s good to know that and I wish I did have the problem of tons of sales coming through that one could be missed in a backup/restore situation!
But I only have sporadic sales so I really don’t think it’s going to be a problem. Besides, a sale will have gone through via PayPal and the info captured in the PayPal email should this ever be an issue.
Thank you for letting me know about it tho! My site finally is live now via Flywheel and I am really enjoying all that you guys have to offer! Loving it!!
JR
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Ok… so I have successfully downloaded a copy of my site. I have made necessary changes that I wanted to do. Local is running fine. Site is purring. Now I am ready to publish it.
From my understanding… all I have to do now is Push the site back up to Flywheel? Correct? That will update the changes that I have just implemented locally?
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Correct @Hellblazer , if your account is connected to Loca, you should be able to push to your Flywheel live site, which will override all the files and the DB with the Local ones.
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Very useful Ben - thank you!
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