Copy “Live” WordPress Blog To Computer

How to copy the whole post and contents of your “live online” wordpress blog to your local server of your computer.

If you are curious and want to apply something new to your online website in your wordpress blog which is installed locally in your PC, you can of course copy your online blog.

In the tutorial i am using bigdump, because i am sure your online site has big size of database.

You need to have these two stuff done before we begin.

1. Save .sql file in your desktop, if you haven’t, follow this video tutorial, how to back up your database and save the .sql file to desktop.

2. Install wordpress locally, in windows or mac.

3. Close all browsers which are connected with your “real live” online blog, to avoid dropping database mistake. So we will be only concentrated on local server.

Let’s start!

1. Download bigdump. And save it to your desktop. Extract this bigdump.zip file, and you will have bigdump.php file.

Bigdump Website.

2. Create a new folder in your desktop, name it “bigdump”.

3. Drag then drop bigdump.php and .sql file into “bigdump” folder.

Drag those two files into the bigdump folder.

4. Inside this bigdump folder, open bigdump.php with text editor (I use notepad++) and find line 39, fill the database name, username, and password. If you don’t know these three, open up wp-config.php of your installed wordpress local blog (line 19).

If your localhost is different, then change the line 38 too. But it is mostly left by default which is “localhost”.

Editing bigdump.php

Next still in bigdump.php, find line 66, and type in “utf8″ next to $db_connection_charset. (see image for the final result).

Where to type utf8

Click “Save”.

5. Edit the sql file (your database backup) with notepad++. Find your live blog’s URL and replace it with localhost URL.

Example: find, http://www.yourdomain.com
replace it with http://localhost/wordpresslocal

All without “slash”.

Click “Replace All”.

Find and Replace URL

6. Next step is move “bigdump” folder to the folder where you installed wordpress locally (same root as wp-config.php).

Move bigdump folder to where wp-config is.

7. Drop the database that you use to install wordpress by opening phpMyAdmin page. It can be found in wampserver icon in the right bottom of your screen, and click once, you should see phpmyAdmin option, select it to open in your browser.

To open phpmyadmin in your browser

To drop, be sure you are in the right database, and click “select all” and in pull down menu, “with selected” select “drop”. Hit “Yes”.

Dropping the right database.

8. Open your web browser, type in: http://localhost/wordpressfolderwhereitisinstalled/bigdump/bigdump.php

Replace wordpressfolderwhereitisinstalled with the folder name, in this case, wordpresslocal.

You should see your sql file, and click “start import”.

Wait until the “Congratulations” message appears, it depends on your sql file size.

Import the sql file.

9. Refresh your local wordpress blog page. It usually displays installation page. Time to check your database table prefix, and double check your wp-config.php line 62. Edit this line to the new table prefix. Save wp-comfig.php.

Checking table prefix if installation page shows up.

10. Refresh your local blog, and it usually displays white screen. This is because your online blog’s theme you don’t have it in your computer.

11. Next step login to your admin page, note your username and password have to be the same as in live online blog.

12. Once you are in Admin page, go to Appearance/themes, and choose your theme. If you want to have different theme, simply move the folder of your theme in wp-content/themes inside the “www” folder where you installed wordpress locally.

13. Refresh your local blog, and it should have same content as your live blog.

Goodluck!

Video Tutorial: