Newbie looking for a bit of advice?

Workflow
1

So I’ve finished redesigning my first-ever client’s website, he is delighted with it and I’ve tidied everything up, ready to go live. I’m a designer by trade but I tried the developing myself, and Local WP was a massive help, and there were ups and downs during the process but I got there.

Now here’s the part that, as a designer and not actually a developer, is scary for me:

PUTTING THE DESIGN ONTO THE CLIENT’S WORDPRESS SITE.

I know that there are plugins which help with this process but a lot of tutorials online seem to specify methods for loading onto an empty domain, rather than a domain with a website already on it.

• Does anyone have any preferred plugins to help with this process? And obviously, to back up the client’s current website in case something goes horribly wrong and my site won’t work, for some obscure reason?

• And there’s a WooCommerce shop as well, is there a way to copy all the client’s shop settings and just transfer them over to the WooCommerce plugin on my new site?

Any help at all will be much appreciated, so thanks in advance.

2

There is a plugin called: WP Migrate DB Pro

It will migrate the database, plugins, theme files, settings, and media.
The database migration will include all of your woocommerce info / orders / history. Before pushing or pulling a copy, it also gives you the option to backup the existing site before in case you need to roll back.

I recommend pulling a local copy of the current site as-is into a new site locally. Then migrating your site over that way you have a copy of the original + backups.

If you are deploying from a local flywheel site to a live site on flywheel, you can use local’s push/pull feature built into the app in the bottom right of your site panel in local. This will be the best and easiest way to deploy. I would only use MDB Pro for sites hosted elsewhere than Flywheel.

3

Thank you for the detailed response Shane. I will look into the plugin you have suggested. I did my research and found one called All-in-One WP Migration which does something similar to what you have described, but it doesn’t quite mention anything about WooCommerce settings.

4

How did deploying the site go @garywaiman?

Migrating a Woocommerce site can be tricky sometimes if there were orders that came in after getting the site down into Local.

What plugin did you end up going with?