I use WordPress for the majority of my client work. I develop locally with MAMP and then move the sites to the remote server when its time to go live or show the client the progress. I just migrate the files via FTP and export/import the database with phpMyAdmin, tweak the url and wp-config.php settings, etc.
This flow has been working fine, but lately I am tiring of having dozens of different WordPress installs on my local machine, having to go through the motions of setting up a new one every time, etc., and would like to streamline things by switching to Multisite.
But I need to be able to export and move each site to its own separate remote server. I’m not ready to us Multisite for my live sites, though it is a tempting idea from a maintenance standpoint.
Is the WordPress export function the best way to do this? I realize that I still have to move all of my media files if I do it this way. Does anyone know how Backup Buddy handles this? I’ve been thinking about throwing down for that service.
Thanks!
Using multisite to develop then export to a single install is a bad idea. For one multisite behaves different than a single install and you want your dev to as close to the production as possible.
It’s also a pain in the a** to manually export the right db tables then import them into a new database.
For developing locally I only use 2 or three WP installs. Your mainly working on theme files so just create a new theme for each project and you can even use one dev database and change the table prefix in wp-config.php so so you don’t have to create a new database each time.
See this answer for complete details on a nice streamlined local dev system to use.
I agree with Pippin, BackupBuddy is awesome. I’ve never tried to export a multi-site to single installs, so I can’t speak for that – but overall, I’m more than happy I bought the license for that sucker. Saved my life many times.
However, I used to develop under Multi-Site, and I stopped doing it – mainly because Multi-Site does behave differently than a single installation. Some of the plugins you’d use for a single install will not work with Multi-Site, and vice-versa (although vice-vers is not as often as trying to use a single-install plugin in a multi-site environment). It just got too difficult to keep track, so I switched back to doing single installs.