Noobie: How to access production site and local site?

I’ve been working with Local since mid-April and it is amazing. Love being able to have the client access the work via tunneling. Very cool!

One of the sites I’m developing is my personal web site; silverlakedevelopment.com. All is going well in Local. I now have the actual domain registered and hosted. (Sorry… can’t afford Flywheel just yet…)

I cannot access the production site, receiving a time out message. When Local is started accessing the site gives the Local version.

I’ve searched on how to have a Local version of my site, for development, and a production version of the site for deployment, and I can’t find anything that I understand.

How do I work with both; Local for development, production for deployment?

Thanks in advance for this noobie question.

I’m hoping that someone can direct me to where my problem is. I’m suspecting something with the ‘hosts’ file.

With Local not running, and obviously the Local website not started, when I try to go to the production website I get a server timeout error.

With Local running and the Local website started, using the URL loads the Local development website.

I know the production site is active because I can access it from another device just fine.

Please let me know how to simultaneously access development on Local and the production site. Thank you very much for your assistance.

Your production site (i.e. your real website) and your Local site on your computer are two separate websites.

The key is to duplicate your real website onto your Local site, work on it locally (which is faster than working on it online). Then once complete, you duplicate your Local site onto your real website - overwriting the data in your real website.

To accomplish this back and forth duplication, you use a plugin.

One commonly used plugin is ALL-IN-ONE WP MIGRATION (upgrade to paid version if you need to transfer a site larger than 500 MB).

ALL-IN-ONE WP MIGRATION creates a backup of our website. You download this backup onto your computer. Then you install this backup on a Local site. Voila, your real website is cloned locally.

Once you are done working on your local website, use ALL-IN-ONE WP MIGRATION again to create a backup. Then install this backup onto your real website, where it will overwrite the data with the updated one. Voila, your real website is now updated with a clone of your Local website.

UPDRAFT PLUS also is another plugin that allows you to duplicate your website locally then uploaded the changes to your real website.

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Thank you Mr. Mariano. I should’ve explained that I am a noobie to Local but not a noobie to website design and WordPress.

In my case there was no production website. I was designing it from scratch on Local. Now I have something that can be uploaded to the newly registered domain with a clean copy of WordPress just waiting there.

Thank you for the recommendation of the WP Migration plugin. I usually use UpdraftPlus but will evaluate that plug-in as well.

What I would like to accomplish is to be able to continue to do website development in Local and at the same time have my production website in a tab in Safari. I would like to be able to switch between the two to verify uploads of changes are working properly. I could do that with MAMP.

There must be something going on with the /private/etc/hosts file or similar. My iPad and iPhone can access silverlakedevelopment.com (the production site) just fine. With Local not running I cannot access silverlakedevelopment.com on my MBA. With Local running and the development site not started I cannot access silverlakedevelopment.com. With Local running and the development site started I can access silverlakedevelopment.com and get the development version.

It came to me that maybe if I log in as Administrator, and not my day-to-day profile, I could access the newly registered domain. Nope. Still get the ‘Safari cannot connect to the server’ message. That indicates to me that any issues with /private/etc/hosts are at the System library level and not at a user profile level.

Here are the contents of my /private/etc/hosts file:

Host Database

localhost is used to configure the loopback interface

when the system is booting. Do not change this entry.

127.0.0.1 localhost
255.255.255.255 broadcasthost
::1 localhost

Local by Flywheel - Start

192.168.75.100 kinesyshealth.com.mx #Local Site
192.168.75.100 silverlakedevelopment.com #Local Site

Local by Flywheel - End

I hope this provides more detail. I’m sure there is something simple that I am overlooking. Even with Local not running I would like to be able to access the production website domain, especially for ftp access and so on in order to upload changes made in the Local environment.

Thank you in advance for your review and assistance!

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Did you create the site in Local with the domain identical to your public domain? Can’t do that. That’s why the default for local development is .dev or something that would ordinarily not resolve to a public domain.

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Excellent! I can change the domain name in Local. I knew it would be something simple. Thanks!

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