deployment - How do I transfer a local Magento install onto my live server?

Question

Uploading a Magento install

I have spent a long time building a store with Magento on my local development PC.

Now that I am happy with the result, I would like to upload it to my live production server.

What steps must I complete to ensure this move is as easy as possible?

Answer 1

moving files and database

I assume these two steps are obvious:

1. copy all of your local files to production server
2. dump your magento local db and import it into your production server db

editing in production server

now on your production server you need to follow these two steps:

1. edit app/etc/local.xml file and change database info

2. in production db,in its core_config_data table, you should find every records containing the url of your local installation, then you need to update those values;which can be found with this query:

     SELECT *
     FROM `core_config_data`
     WHERE `value` LIKE 'http://%';

edit (thanks to comments):
3. Do not forget to delete var folder contents
4. it'd better if you remove the content of app/etc/use_cache.ser too