Re: Importing/copying a buddypress mirror locally using MAMP
I work with local mirrors on MAMP Pro. This is what I do :
1. Copy the remote files (the whole install) to my local machine (I do this so the file creation dates are the same).
2. Backup the remote database with phpMyAdmin (be sure to select Add DROP TABLE) as a gzip file.
3. Edit the local copy of wp-config.php for my local machine’s database connection.
4. Create a new local database and import the remote backup (I personally always destroy the local db and create a new empty one to import into – then I know it’s clean).
5. Use this tool to change all absolute URLs from remote to local: http://spectacu.la/search-and-replace-for-wordpress-databases/
Then I’ll test new plugins locally before deploying. Also I update plugins locally, and then manually copy them to the server, having had a few past failures updating plugins on production servers. Once it’s running, the only files I normally have to backup from remote to local are all in wp-content (avatars etc., which can easily be sync’d).
Hope that helps.
