Welcome to the Treehouse Community

Want to collaborate on code errors? Have bugs you need feedback on? Looking for an extra set of eyes on your latest project? Get support with fellow developers, designers, and programmers of all backgrounds and skill levels here with the Treehouse Community! While you're at it, check out some resources Treehouse students have shared here.

Looking to learn something new?

Treehouse offers a seven day free trial for new students. Get access to thousands of hours of content and join thousands of Treehouse students and alumni in the community today.

Start your free trial

WordPress

Brandon Benefield
Brandon Benefield
7,739 Points

Updating WP site from Local to Remote

So I've gone through the beginning WP track, pretty straightforward. I have a very basic live WP site up and running. I can export PRODUCTION DB and import to LOCAL DB and vice versa.

So what happens when I export from the REMOTE, make changes LOCALLY and import back to the REMOTE DB. Any changes made to the REMOTE site, such as user comments to a post, will become overwritten by the import from the LOCAL DB.

Simple solution or not, this is a HUGE problem with WordPress and there has got to be a way to do this, whether through a plugin or doing this manually. I am no MySQL expert or beginner, but in theory, one could export a specific command from the LOCAL and import that single command REMOTELY.

There is an insanely large chance that I am wrong in my assumptions, so please somebody fill in the gap here.

Dave StSomeWhere
Dave StSomeWhere
19,870 Points

Why are you exporting your data base to local after the site is live? Are you attempting to change content locally?

Brandon Benefield
Brandon Benefield
7,739 Points

So far I have always worked like this for any project. None have been WP related so I figured this is how one would work in WP as well. I wouldnt want to make a change to the live site without first testing it locally or am I wrong in the case of working with WP?

Dave StSomeWhere
Dave StSomeWhere
19,870 Points

I think you confusing content with presentation/functionality. The content is stored in the database while themes and plugins are in the wp-content folder.

So, if you want to develop themes, plugins and/or try some out you can locally and downloading the database/content to to have a realistic dev environment is normal - you just shouldn't need to upload the database back.

Now, yes it does get tricky if you want to add content locally and merge it with live data - then you would need to write your own export and import SQL statements (after testing on multiple local sites first).