Difference between revisions of "Copying a website from localhost to a remote host"

Latest revision as of 10:32, 10 October 2022

When you are first trying out Joomla!, it is often recommended that you install it on your local system. localhost for example with XAMPP, and get your site running locally. Eventually you may want to copy this site to your remote host. Fortunately, this is easy to do.

This article assumes you have installed Joomla! on your local computer, you have created a website and you now wish to copy this website to your remote host.

Using Akeeba Backup to Move a Site (Preferred Method)[edit]

Akeeba Backup produces a .jpa file.
The .jpa file contains all the folders, files and the contents of the database.
The .jpa file also contains an installer.
The kickstart.php file from Akeeba unpacks the .jpa file.
You then run the kickstart.php program and install your site.
The installer has an option to change the configuration for restoring to a different location.

Akeeba Backup can be downloaded from Joomla extension directory. There is a link to full instructions there as well.

Alternate Method[edit]

Create a Place on Your Remote Host to Install Joomla![edit]

If this is a new site, it will just be your home directory. If you have an existing site, for example www.domain.com, that you wish to keep while you work with Joomla!, you may be able to create a subdomain, for example, mytest.domain.com to hold your Joomla! site.

Copy Files and Directories of Your Local Joomla Directory to the Remote Host[edit]

You have two methods:

Upload all files by FTP
Upload only a compressed file by FTP

Upload All Files by FTP[edit]

Normally, the easiest way to copy these files is using an FTP client program, such as Filezilla.

Select all files from the directory localhost. (With XAMPP, the directory will be /xampp/www/directory.) Upload to the remote host HTML directory for a domain or to the remote host HTML subdirectory.

Select Dir Host and Upload to remote host or subdirectory remote host
Dir LocalHost	Upload to Html Root	Or Upload Sub. Html Root

Upload a Compressed File[edit]

Copying a large number of individual files using FTP can be unreliable. If you have command-line access to the both source and destination systems, you can create a compressed archive file containing all the files on the source system. Then transfer that single file to the destination system where it can be decompressed.

Creating an Archive File[edit]

On Unix-style systems such as Linux, you can use the Gzip program to create .zip files, or the Tar program to create .tar.gz or .tar.bz2 files. For detailed instructions, type man gzip or man tar at the command line. For example,

 tar cvfz joomlabackup.tar.gz /path-to-joomla

will create a gzip-compressed archive file, called joomlabackup.tar.gz. It contains all the files in your Joomla! installation. Important note! You need to make sure you are not in the folder you are trying to backup when you run the tar command or you will create an endless loop.

Extracting an Archive File[edit]

Having copied the archive file to the destination system, you now need to unpack it. Use the equivalent command that you used to create the archive file. For example, to unpack the archive file created in the example above, enter

cd /path-to-joomla
tar xvfz joomlabackup.tar.gz

If the user or group IDs are not the same between the source and destination systems, you will need to amend the ownership of the files you just extracted. For example, on an Apache system, you might need to enter the command

cd /path-to-joomla
chown -R www-group.www-user *

Copy the Contents of Your Local MySQL Database to the Host MySQL Database[edit]

In Joomla!, all the contents of the site (articles, menus, users, and so on) are stored in the MySQL database. You need to copy this information to the host database. This is done by creating an export file on your local system and then importing this file into your host MySQL database, as follows:

Open phpMyAdmin on your local system by navigating to its URL with your browser. On your local system, this URL will normally be //localhost/phpmyadmin. Note: If you have a password on your database, you will be prompted for it.
The phpMyAdmin screen will display as shown below. Select the Export link.

Select the database you want to export in the upper right-hand list. In the example below, the database joomla15 is selected. Keep all the default options, including SQL as the export type.

Check the Save as file box at the bottom of the screen and enter the name of the export file, as shown below.

Press the Go button in the lower right corner. An Open/Save/Cancel dialog will display. Press Save and select a folder to save the file in. The export will complete and the file will be saved in the chosen location.

Open up the phpMyAdmin on the remote server.
Select the Import tab.
Click the Browse button under File to import. Then select the database file from your computer.
Click Go to import the database.

At this point you have installed the database.

If you want to create a database copy, you can also use the MySQL command line method. Usually you run mysqldump to create a database copy:

$ mysqldump -u user -p db-name > db-name.out

Copy db-name.out file using sftp/ssh to remote MySQL server:

$ scp db-name.out user@remote.box.com:/backup

Restore the database at the remote server (login over SSH):

$ mysql -u user -p db-name < db-name.out

Configure the Site and Edit the configuration.php File[edit]

Manually edit configuration.php to tell Joomla! about your site. The file configuration.php contains settings specific to your system. This file was created for you when you installed Joomla! on your localhost. The settings in the configuration.php file that you typically need to change are shown below. This example is from a Windows XP localhost system.

var $log_path = 'C:\\xampp\\htdocs\\joomla15\\logs';
var $tmp_path = 'C:\\xampp\\htdocs\\joomla15\\tmp';
var $live_site = '';
var $host = 'localhost';
var $user = 'root';
var $db = 'your_local_db_name';
var $password = 'your_local_db_password';

Now at your remote host system, the settings in the configuration.php file that you typically need to change are shown below:

var $log_path = '/var/www/vhost/domain.com/home/html/logs';
var $tmp_path = '/var/www/vhost/domain.com/home/html/tmp';
var $live_site = '';
var $host = 'name your remote host';
var $user = 'your_user_db_name';
var $db = 'your_db_name';
var $password = 'your_db_password';

If you uploaded Joomla! files to a subdirectory, remember that you are working on subdirectory. The settings that you need will be:

var $log_path = '/var/www/vhost/domain.com/subdirectory/html/logs';
var $tmp_path = '/var/www/vhost/domain.com/subdirectory/html/tmp';
var $live_site = '';
var $host = 'name your remote host';
var $user = 'your_user_db_name';
var $db = 'your_db_name';
var $password = 'your_db_password';

At this point, your Joomla! website on your host should be operational with the same information as your localhost site. If you installed it on a subdirectory, navigate to that subdirectory to see or administer the site.

http://mytest.domain.com/ (for navigation to the site)

http://mytest.domain.com/administrator (Login to the Joomla admin area with your user and password that you had at your localhost installation.)

and if you installed it on root directory, to see the site:

http://www.domain.com/ (for navigation to the site)

http://www.domain.com/administrator (login to admin area)

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
-{{review}}
+<noinclude><languages /></noinclude>
-When you are first trying out Joomla!, it is often recommended that you install it on your local system (e.g., "localhost"), for example with XAMPP, and get your site running locally. In this case, you may do enough work on your local Joomla! site that you want to copy this site to your remote host. Fortunately, this is easy to do.
-This article assumes you have installed Joomla! 1.5 on your local computer, you have created a website, and you now wish to copy this website to your remote host. Here are the steps:
+When you are first trying out Joomla!, it is often recommended that you install it on your local system. ''localhost'' for example with [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XAMPP XAMPP], and get your site running locally. Eventually you may want to copy this site to your remote host. Fortunately, this is easy to do.
-#'''Create a place on your remote host to install Joomla!.'''  If this is a new site, it will just be your home directory. If you have an existing site that you wish to keep while you work with Joomla!, you may be able to create a subdomain to hold your Joomla! site. Make sure you note the subdomain name for later. The details of creating a subdomain will vary by host, so you will need to check with your host on this.
+This article assumes you have installed Joomla! on your local computer, you have created a website and you now wish to copy this website to your remote host.
-#'''Install Joomla! on your host site.''' Again, the procedure for this will vary from host to host. Many hosts have custom scripts for installing Joomla! that make it very easy. Check with your host if you are not sure how to do this. In the installation, you do not need to create the sample website, since we will be replacing all of the contents of this database.
-#'''Copy custom files from your local site to your remote site.''' This step will depend on what you have customised in the local site. At a minimum, you have probably added some image files. You also might have installed some extensions, customised the template, or added some template overrides. If you have done a significant amount of customisation, the safest thing to do is to copy all of the files and folders from your local Joomla! folder to your host folder ''except for the file "configuration.php".'' No '''NOT''' replace this file on your host. Normally, the easiest way to copy these files is using an FTP client program, like [http://filezilla-project.org/ Filezilla]. Your host will provide you with the FTP site name and your FTP username and password.
-#'''Copy the contents of your local MySQL database to the host MySQL database.''' In Joomla!, all of the contents of the site (articles, menus, users, and so on) are stored in the MySql database. So you need to copy this information to the host database. This is done by creating an export file on your local system and then importing this file into your host MySQL database, as follows:
-## Open phpMyAdmin on your local system by navigating to it's URL with your browser. On your local system, this URL will normally be "//localhost/phpmyadmin". Note: If you have a password on your database, you will be prompted for it.
-## The phpMyAdmin screen will display as shown below. Select the Export link.[[Image:screenshot_phpmyadmin1.png|frame|center]]
-## Select the database you want to export in the upper right-hand list. In the example below, the database "joomla15" is selected. Keep all of the default options, including "SQL" as the export type.[[Image:screenshot_phpmyadmin2.png|frame|center]]
-## Check the "Save as file" box at the bottom of the screen, and enter the name of the export file, as shown below. .[[Image:screenshot_phpmyadmin3.png|frame|center]]
-## Press the "Go" button in the lower right corner. An Open / Save / Cancel dialog will display. Press Save and select a folder to save the file in. The export will complete and the file will be saved in the chosen location.
-## Open up the phpMyAdmin on the host server. Your host should give you instructions for how to do this.
-## At this point, you need to import the contents of the export file created above. Before you can do that, however, all of the data from the existing Joomla! database must be deleted. An easy way to do that is to select the MySQL database for Joomla! from the drop-down list box in the upper left, as shown below.[[Image:screenshot_phpmyadmin4.png|frame|center]]
-## The list of tables in the selected database will display. We want to delete all of these tables, since the Import will re-create them. Scroll down to the bottom of the list and select the "Check All" link. This will select all tables in the list. Then, in the drop-down list to the right of the Check All link, select "Drop", as shown below.[[Image:screenshot_phpmyadmin5.png|frame|center]]
-## You will be asked to confirm that you really want to do this (since you are in effect deleting the entire database). Press Yes and you should get a message indicating that the query was successful.
-## With the database still selected, press the Import Link at the top of the screen and browse to the location in your host folder where the .SQL export file was uploaded. Press Open to select the file and then press Go (lower left corner) to start the import. Again, you should get a message indicating that the query was successful.
-Congratulations! At this point, your Joomla! website on your host should be operational with the exact same information as your localhost site. If you installed it on a subdomain, navigate to that subdomain to see or administer the site. For example, if your subdomain was named "mysubdomain", then navigating to http://www.mysubdomain.mywebsite.com should bring up your home page and http://www.mysubdomain.mywebsite.com/administer should bring up the login to the Joomla! admin area.
+== Using Akeeba Backup to Move a Site (Preferred Method) ==
+* Akeeba Backup produces a ''.jpa'' file.
+* The ''.jpa'' file contains all the folders, files and the contents of the database.
+* The ''.jpa'' file also contains an installer.
+* The ''kickstart.php'' file from [https://www.akeeba.com/products/akeeba-kickstart.html Akeeba] unpacks the ''.jpa'' file.
+* You then run the ''kickstart.php'' program and install your site.
+* The installer has an option to change the configuration for restoring to a different location.
-'''Alternate Procedure If You Cannot Install Joomla!'''
+Akeeba Backup can be downloaded from [https://extensions.joomla.org/extension/access-a-security/site-security/akeeba-backup/ Joomla extension directory]. There is a link to full instructions there as well.
-In some cases, it is not possible to install Joomla! on a host using the normal installation procedure. In this case, we modify the steps (2) and (3) above as follows:
-*Copy ALL files from the local Joomla! directory to the host Joomla! directory, ''including'' "configuration.php".
+== Alternate Method ==
-*Manually edit "configuration.php" to tell Joomla! about your site. The file "configuration.php" contains settings specific to your system. This file was created for you when you installed Joomla! on your localhost. The settings in the configuration.php file that you typically need to change are shown below. This example is from a Windows XP localhost system.
+=== Create a Place on Your Remote Host to Install Joomla! ===
-<source lang="php">
+If this is a new site, it will just be your home directory. If you have an existing site, for example ''www.domain.com'', that you wish to keep while you work with Joomla!, you may be able to create a subdomain, for example, ''mytest.domain.com'' to hold your Joomla! site.
+=== Copy Files and Directories of Your Local Joomla Directory to the Remote Host ===
+You have two methods:
+# Upload all files by FTP
+# Upload only a compressed file by FTP
+==== Upload All Files by FTP ====
+Normally, the easiest way to copy these files is using an FTP client program, such as [https://filezilla-project.org Filezilla].
+Select all files from the directory localhost. (With XAMPP, the directory will be ''/xampp/www/directory''.) Upload to the remote host HTML directory for a domain or to the remote host HTML subdirectory.
+{| class="wikitable"
+|+ Select Dir Host and Upload to remote host or subdirectory remote host
+! Dir LocalHost !! Upload to Html Root !! Or Upload Sub. Html Root
+|-
+| [[Image:Filezilladircopy.png|Select Dir.]] || [[Image:Filezilladirectory.png|Dir Filezilla.]] || [[Image:Filezillasubdirectory.png|Subdir Filezilla.]]
+|-
+|}
+==== Upload a Compressed File ====
+Copying a large number of individual files using FTP can be unreliable. If you have command-line access to the both source and destination systems, you can create a compressed archive file containing all the files on the source system. Then transfer that single file to the destination system where it can be decompressed.
+===== Creating an Archive File =====
+On Unix-style systems such as Linux, you can use the [https://www.gnu.org/software/gzip/ Gzip program] to create ''.zip'' files, or the [https://www.gnu.org/software/tar/ Tar program] to create ''.tar.gz'' or ''.tar.bz2'' files. For detailed instructions, type ''man gzip'' or ''man tar'' at the command line. For example,
+<syntaxhighlight lang="php">
+ tar cvfz joomlabackup.tar.gz /path-to-joomla
+</syntaxhighlight>
+will create a gzip-compressed archive file, called ''joomlabackup.tar.gz''. It contains all the files in your Joomla! installation.
+Important note! You need to make sure you are '''not''' in the folder you are trying to backup when you run the tar command or you will create an endless loop.
+===== Extracting an Archive File =====
+Having copied the archive file to the destination system, you now need to unpack it. Use the equivalent command that you used to create the archive file. For example, to unpack the archive file created in the example above, enter
+<syntaxhighlight lang="php">
+cd /path-to-joomla
+tar xvfz joomlabackup.tar.gz
+</syntaxhighlight>
+If the user or group IDs are not the same between the source and destination systems, you will need to amend the ownership of the files you just extracted. For example, on an Apache system, you might need to enter the command
+<syntaxhighlight lang="php">
+cd /path-to-joomla
+chown -R www-group.www-user *
+</syntaxhighlight>
+=== Copy the Contents of Your Local MySQL Database to the Host MySQL Database ===
+In Joomla!, all the contents of the site (articles, menus, users, and so on) are stored in the MySQL database. You need to copy this information to the host database. This is done by creating an export file on your local system and then importing this file into your host MySQL database, as follows:
+:::#Open phpMyAdmin on your local system by navigating to its URL with your browser. On your local system, this URL will normally be ''//localhost/phpmyadmin''. Note: If you have a password on your database, you will be prompted for it.
+:::#The phpMyAdmin screen will display as shown below. Select the Export link.
+[[Image:screenshotphpmyadmin_1.png|ScreenShot Phpmyadmin.]]
+:::Select the database you want to export in the upper right-hand list. In the example below, the database ''joomla15'' is selected. Keep all the default options, including ''SQL'' as the export type.
+[[Image:screenshotphpmyadmin_2.png|ScreenShot Phpmyadmin.]]
+:::Check the ''Save as file'' box at the bottom of the screen and enter the name of the export file, as shown below.
+[[Image:Screenshot_phpmyadmin3.png|ScreenShot Phpmyadmin.]]
+:::Press the ''Go'' button in the lower right corner. An ''Open/Save/Cancel'' dialog will display. Press ''Save'' and select a folder to save the file in. The export will complete and the file will be saved in the chosen location.
+:::#Open up the phpMyAdmin on the remote server.
+:::#Select the ''Import'' tab.
+:::#Click the ''Browse'' button under ''File to import''. Then select the database file from your computer.
+:::#Click ''Go'' to import the database.
+At this point you have installed the database.
+If you want to create a database copy, you can also use the MySQL command line method.
+Usually you run ''mysqldump'' to create a database copy:
+<syntaxhighlight lang="php">
+$ mysqldump -u user -p db-name > db-name.out
+</syntaxhighlight>
+Copy db-name.out file using sftp/ssh to remote MySQL server:
+<syntaxhighlight lang="php">
+$ scp db-name.out user@remote.box.com:/backup
+</syntaxhighlight>
+Restore the database at the remote server (login over SSH):
+<syntaxhighlight lang="php">
+$ mysql -u user -p db-name < db-name.out
+</syntaxhighlight>
+=== Configure the Site and Edit the ''configuration.php'' File ===
+Manually edit ''configuration.php'' to tell Joomla! about your site. The file ''configuration.php'' contains settings specific to your system. This file was created for you when you installed Joomla! on your localhost. The settings in the ''configuration.php'' file that you typically need to change are shown below. This example is from a Windows XP localhost system.
+<syntaxhighlight lang="php">
 var $log_path = 'C:\\xampp\\htdocs\\joomla15\\logs';
 var $tmp_path = 'C:\\xampp\\htdocs\\joomla15\\tmp';
@@ Line 34: / Line 107: @@
 var $db = 'your_local_db_name';
 var $password = 'your_local_db_password';
-</source>
+</syntaxhighlight>
+Now at your remote host system, the settings in the ''configuration.php'' file that you typically need to change are shown below:
+<syntaxhighlight lang="php">
+var $log_path = '/var/www/vhost/domain.com/home/html/logs';
+var $tmp_path = '/var/www/vhost/domain.com/home/html/tmp';
+var $live_site = '';
+var $host = 'name your remote host';
+var $user = 'your_user_db_name';
+var $db = 'your_db_name';
+var $password = 'your_db_password';
+</syntaxhighlight>
+If you uploaded Joomla! files to a subdirectory, remember that you are working on subdirectory. The settings that you need will be:
+<syntaxhighlight lang="php">
+var $log_path = '/var/www/vhost/domain.com/subdirectory/html/logs';
+var $tmp_path = '/var/www/vhost/domain.com/subdirectory/html/tmp';
+var $live_site = '';
+var $host = 'name your remote host';
+var $user = 'your_user_db_name';
+var $db = 'your_db_name';
+var $password = 'your_db_password';
+</syntaxhighlight>
+At this point, your Joomla! website on your host should be operational with the same information as your localhost site. If you installed it on a subdirectory, navigate to that subdirectory to see or administer the site.
+<nowiki>http://mytest.domain.com/</nowiki> (for navigation to the site)
+<nowiki>http://mytest.domain.com/administrator</nowiki> (Login to the Joomla admin area with your user and password that you had at your localhost installation.)
-:*The values for $log_path and $tmp_path point to paths on your remote host system. These will typically be provided to you by your host. Or, if you know your home directory on the host system, use this directory and a "logs" and "tmp" subdirectory.
+and if you installed it on root directory, to see the site:
-:*The $live_site variable is just the URL of your site.
-:*The $host variable is often "localhost" and will be given to you by your host.
-:*The $user variable is the MySql user name. This is typically "root" on a localhost but may be a different name on a remote host. If you created the MySql database manually, you can use the username you used for phpMyAdmin. Otherwise, your host will provide this.
-:*The $db variable is the name of the database.
-:*The $password variable is the password this database user uses to access the database. Note that this may not be the same as used to access the Joomla! back end.
-*Create the Joomla! database, typically using phpMyAdmin. You should be provided a $user and $password by your host and you will choose the $db name when you create the database. In a shared hosting environment, the database name may include your URL or some other mechanism to make it unique across all of the sites being hosted by your host.
+<nowiki>http://www.domain.com/</nowiki> (for navigation to the site)
-At this point, continue on to step (4) "Copy the contents of your local MySQL database to the host MySQL database".
+<nowiki>http://www.domain.com/administrator</nowiki> (login to admin area)
-[[Category:FAQ]]
+<noinclude>[[Category:Tutorials]]
-[[Category:Getting Started]]
+[[Category:Installation]]
-[[Category:Upgrading and Migrating FAQ]]
+[[Category:Update Working Group]]
+</noinclude>
+<noinclude>[[Category:Needs to be marked for translation]]</noinclude>