Joomla Training
How to Move a Site from Local to Live Server

Many people like to develop their Joomla sites locally and then move their work to a live host when completed. This weeks tutorial will show you how to move an exact copy of your site from your localhost to a live server, database and all.

We're going to use a fantastic component called JoomlaPack to help us with the process. We'll first use it to make a backup of our local site (files + database), and then we'll use a provided tool (Kickstart) to restore the backup to our live server.

Here's how you do it:

  1. Download the JoomlaPack component. Make sure you get the latest release, which at the time of this newletter is 2.2
  2. Download the Kickstart app, again making sure you ge the latest release, 2.2Stable - unzip the package for later use.
  3. In the administration area of your local Joomla site, go to Extensions >> Install / Uninstall and upload the JoomlaPack component file: com_joomlapack-2.2-free.zip
  4. In the administration area of your local Joomla site, go to Components >> JoomlaPack >> Configuration and we're going to change a setting before we backup and migrate. Click on the 'Advanced' tab and then locate the 'Archiver engine' and change it to 'JPA JoomlaPack Archive, and click Save.
  5. Click on the Backup Now button (you'll notice a warning regarding the default directory being used for the backup - we can ignore this *for now) and then the 'Backup Now!' You should see the backup process begin, and be given a success page when completed.
  6. Locate the backup file in your localhost joomla_root/administrator/components/com_joomlapack/backup - the backup file will have the extension .jpa. Upload this file to the directory on your live server where you will do the restore. For most this will be the root directory, /html or /home etc
  7. Upload the Kickstart app file to this same directory. You should have unzipped the package in an earlier step, if not, unzip and then upload the file.
  8. Create a new database using phpMyAdmin or the tool provided by your host to do so. This new database will be used for our restore to populate with our backed up data. Make note of the hostname, username/password and database name for further steps.
  9. Navigate in your browser to http://backup_directory/kickstart.php (where backup_directory is the directory your backup file is located). Insert your Host, Username, and Password information and click on the green Start button. You will see the process beign - do not close this browser window!
  10. Once the file extraction is done you will see a message to 'Please click here to open JoomlaPack Installer restore script in a new window'. Click there.
  11. A new window will open, and you will see a typical looking Joomla installation page, however this is the restore script. Go through the installation process, making sure you put your new information for hostname, username, password and database in Step 4.
  12. After successful Joomla installation (restore in our case) go back to the other browser window and click on the link to restore your .htaccess file if you need to do this step, and close the browser window when done.
  13. The restoration process should now be completed, and you can log in to your newly moved site at /administrator to continue development on the live server.

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Comments  

 
#13 Jagdeep 2010-08-06 20:25
worked brilliantly. just a couple of minor issues where some images were not located. easily fixed through admin. :-)
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#12 Sam 2010-04-16 21:01
when i click at 'Please click here to open JoomlaPack Installer restore script in a new window'.

it came out this error instead of the standard joomla installation >>

Internal Server Error

The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguratio n and was unable to complete your request.

Please contact the server administrator, and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.

More information about this error may be available in the server error log.

Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.
Apache/2.2.11 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.2.11 OpenSSL/0.9.8b mod_auth_passth rough/2.1 mod_bwlimited/1.4 FrontPage/5.0.2.2635 Server at www.pinjamankoperasi.com Port 80


why is this?
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#11 Alex M 2010-03-11 19:18
Great tutorial Thanks!Question
My live site has the database monty
My test site has the database realtest
can i use joomla pack and upload the new inproved site from my local host to the sever but point it to the monty database instead of realtest?
Thanks
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#10 jannidie 2010-01-31 18:09
i got stuck in Step 11 - DB Restore
here is the error:

AJAX error:
parsererror(und efined)

Raw Data:
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#9 Frankw1 2010-01-24 22:36
Step 11 leaves me with the following error:

Error: +:
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#8 Prashant Trambake 2010-10-29 09:48
Thanxxxxxxxxxxx xxx a lot......... Finally I got what I want.
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#7 dhvani 2010-10-09 06:01
Hi,

I go through this way and i only get the admin section working.

Front end pages not working for me. and in admin article section I got 'Published, but is Pending |' for each article . And i am not able to publish it again.

Please help me out.
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#6 areacode514 2010-10-04 04:17
I got stuck at around step 11, but then realized (after many trials and tribulations) that in step 9 I had (mistakenly) put the Username and Password information for my SQL database.

Instead, I should have put the Username and Password information required to connect to my host server through FTP.

This seems to have solved the problem.

Notes:
Other things I did, in case they also helped:
- I changed from JoomlaPack Installer 4 (JPI 4) to JPI 3. This is because my local server is running wamp which only has PHP 4. From reading around the JoomlaPack forums, I gathered that JPI 4 works for PHP 5.
- When the JoomlaPack installer was unpacking (towards the very last steps), it asked me for my site name, email, and Admin password. Here, the first time I put the password from my SQL database (which did not work). The second time around, I put the password that I used to access the Joomla admin on my local server. That was the correct one.
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#5 Kirk 2010-09-10 12:28
this is the best and most clear tutorial for upload joomla site from localhost to sever, I spend hours to find it and it is very helpful!
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#4 Julia 2010-08-12 05:39
thanks, I have proceeded successfully till the step 11, and here is the problem. After I insert all the information about host, database and user name and click next, I get the following error message: could not connect to database, please check your connection settings.
I do not have any idea of how to fix this.
Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks
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