Hi all,
I just finished developing my new site in Local. I want to replace the current “live” site that is hosted in Flywheel. How to accomplish this?
Thank you.
P.S. I have read: Move Sites Between Flywheel & Local (Development Workflow) and, How to migrate a local flywheel site to live website hosting account and Migrating Site To Flywheel | Step By Step Guide but is not very clear.
Hi, there! Happy to help.
The main process is to replace your live site’s wp-content folder with the Local site’s wp-content folder, and to also replace the live site’s database with the Local database.
You can connect to SFTP on Flywheel (to access the wp-content folder) with these directions: Flywheel | SFTP Access and Uploads
Once connected, navigate to the wp-content folder, then just drag the wp-content from your Local site into the SFTP client window so that it overwrites the live site’s wp-content.
Then you can head to Database > Adminer in Local, and export the database as a file.
That will download a .sql file to your machine. Next, head to your live site’s Flywheel dashboard, to the Advanced tab, and click into the database manager. Upload the file you just downloaded from Local in the SQL tab of the database manager.
Once that database is uploaded, you’ll probably need to change the database prefix. That’s the set of characters that ALL tables in your database share at the beginning, like in this screenshot:
Note that you SHOULD NOT change the tables themselves. Don’t change their names. Instead, you’ll head to the Advanced tab of the site’s Flywheel dashboard, and change the database prefix from there. (In other words, don’t change what you uploaded; change what WordPress is looking for so that it matches the prefix the tables already have. This will usually begin with “wp” and usually end with an underscore, but it varies.)
Once you’ve done that, you should be in business! Depending on how things were coded on the site you uploaded, you may also need to run a search-and-replace of the site. There are plugins like Better Search Replace to help with that.
If you see the WordPress installation screen when you try to access the site, try turning WP_DEBUG on and off from the Advanced tab of the site’s Flywheel Dashboard. If it’s still there once you do, make sure the database prefix matches up exactly.
Hope that helps! If you get that far and you’re still having troubles, drop us a line here: https://app.getflywheel.com/contact
Hey Josh – what do you mean by ‘your live site’s Flywheel dashboard’ ??
Thanks!
After logging in here: https://app.getflywheel.com/login
You would see a list of your sites that are hosted on Flywheel. Click one to get to its Flywheel dashboard.
That said, this is an older workflow, and may be helpful in some cases. But now you can push to Flywheel from Local automatically without having to go through these manual steps. Here’s how: https://getflywheel.com/wordpress-support/connect-to-flywheel/
Hello! If my hosting is not flywhell? How do I find the wp content folder in my local site? And then I can delete the wp content folder in my live site, and paste the one from local? Is that it? I need some explanations please. Thank you all
How do I know if i’m supposed to change the database prefix? Or where do i need to go to make sure it’s the right prefix
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