How to copy/transfer WordPress sites from one location to another

admin

Administrator
Staff member
I'm new to WordPress and thoroughly impressed with the platform... That is until it came time to publish my local MAMP wordpress site to my production server- There's just no clear and straightforward way to transfer a site from one server to another.

<strong>Objective:</strong>

Transfer a complete wordpress site from one location to another, while maintaining all media, settings, and content.

<strong>Existing method limitations:</strong>

<ul>
<li>Built-in export/import functionality
<ul>
<li>Does not transfer themes or settings</li>
<li>Adds to current content, but does not replace current articles or clear out old ones.</li>
</ul></li>
<li>Doing a sql-dump export and import
<ul>
<li>paths are absolute, and are not updated, so links, etc are all broken in new site.</li>
</ul></li>
</ul>

<strong>NOTE:</strong>

The codex offers this <a href="http://codex.wordpress.org/Moving_WordPress" rel="nofollow">multi-step solution</a>, but I'm looking for something easier. It's not practical for repeated transfers, like in a publishing scenario.