Editing a wordpress website

  • Hi! I’m new to web sites in general, but a competent programmer.

    A group of us have recently set up a website, using word press and the revolution pro media theme. It’s all good and up and running, and somewhat personalised ??

    I’ve been searching, and can’t really find an answer, so thought I’d ask direct!

    So far, I’ve made all the changes pretty much online. I’d download a source file over FTP, make changes, upload it and see if its working. How do most people backup, update and test their site? I’m used to things like subversion, where I have a local copy, which I can play with, change, run and test until I’m happy, at which point I submit the modifications. If I totally screw it up, it’s easy to replace my mess with the live copies. It’s also good for tracking changes etc. Is there similar stuff for web sites? Any advice?!

    Thanks!
    Matthew

    PS I’m on a mac

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)

  • Not entirely clear what are you talking about: layout/design or content?

    For design, most of us have a local install using something like XAMPP, MAMP etc. Installing_WordPress#Installing_WordPress_on_your_own_Computer

    After testing any change, modification oin the theme template files, we upload them via ftp, that’s right.

    Re: backup – it is again a two fold question, content or design?
    Backing_Up_Your_Database

    Thread Starter fredsherbet

    (@fredsherbet)

    I’m referring mostly to layout/design.

    Is it best to backup content and design separately?

    Installing wordpress locally sounds like a good start. Thanks very much for the link! It refers to hosting from home. Is there much pain in sending my ‘home’ copy up to the webspace? i.e. will all the links break? and… will I have to manually upload the changed files, or upload everything, or is there something that will track the changes?

    Since they ARE already separated (content in database, design in theme folder) – the backup goes separately: files via FTP (=download), DB via phpMyadmin.

    I am not sure I understand your other questions.
    No, it is not really “hosting from home”: it just a local install that is NOT connected to your online installation at all. You don’t send anything from that installation to the web. You experiment and play with the theme files (after making a backup copy first!!!)… and then upload the files to your example.com/wp-content/themes/your-theme/ directory.

    No tracking of your changes on the theme files.

    Thread Starter fredsherbet

    (@fredsherbet)

    okay. I think i’m with it, now ?? I’ll have a go at setting up a local install this evening and see how I get on.

    Thank you very much for your help!

    Matthew

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
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