Transferring a Live Site to Local: Best Practice

Workflow
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Hi,

My first post! I’m not having much luck with importing a live site [www.ovenrestore.com.au] into Local to do further development.

What is the best practice?

I have tried utilising an Updraft Plus backup and dropping the drag-dropping the files but it gives an error to every combination of files I could put together, including a sql copy of the database.

I have tried transferring using duplicator (as I have used that elsewhere to successfully transfer sites) but the install.php gives a massive error.

I have even just tried copying the entire site over hoping that Local might recognise it as a site.

I could just rebuild the site as it is pretty basic. But How should it be done?

Sorry just to confirm I’m running Catalina 10.15.2 on a MacPro.

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This is the error I get when using Duplicator:

Imgur

Steve L

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My local system is Ubuntu, I make a backup of my live website using Snapshot Pro. it produces a zip file. In Local, i click on File, Import Site and select my zipped file. Local handles the rest.

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Thanks for the reply. I ended up using All-in-One to transfer it.Cheers

1 Like
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Just to round out the responses here – using a plugin is a great option since they will often create a backup that includes both the files as well as the database.

From Local’s point of view, all it needs is a zip backup that includes the wp-content folder and a .sql file of the database dump. Here’s a help doc that has a bit more info along with some screenshots:

If your host offers automated backups, many of those are just zip files, and even if they aren’t you can probably extract the backup and then zip it up. From there you should be able to just drag and drop it onto Local to import it!