Saturday, June 18, 2011

Migrating from localhost to Web Server - Joomla Guide

As I experienced, there is a tricky thing in the process of creating and hosting web site Using Joomla. That is hosting a web site in free or commercial web hosting places.
Most of us are used to create the web site in the localhost using Joomla, and when we are going to host the site we migrate to the web server. But that is not the 100% efficient way. In this article i will give you some point which makes your life easy.

  • Creating a hosting place for your Web Site.
In this I will give you some places where you can host your web site for free. Ex- WWW.0fees.net, WWW.000webs.com. First of all you have fill the registration forms in these sites and you will have you web hosting account. For example I did it with 0fees. Then you will get a access to your control panel of your web server. There you can configure all the things, like database, sub domains, FTP etc.

  • Start the development of your web site in the hosting place.
This will be the most efficient way of development as I think. Because there will be upload times, but no configuration of files. You can use some kind of FTP client(FileZilla, Win FTP, SSH Client) to upload your Joomla fresh copy to the folder which holds the files in web server. To log in using FTP you have to use Username, Password, Server provided by the hosting place.


After uploading fresh copy you can install Joomla at the web server, Using the details provided by Hosting Place. Like SQL database username, password etc.

  • Migrating from local host to Web Host.
If you have already create your web site in localhost, you have to follow some tricky steps. First of all you have to go the local folder where Joomla resides. Get a copy of that to a another place. In side that you can find a file called configure.php, open that using a text editor. In that you can find lot of parameters of Joomla. You have to edit some of the them to work with hosting place.
Before that go to your control panel of the hosting site and create a Database using the name which you have entered in the installation process of Joomla. But you will get the database name appended by a your username. Get it.
In the configure.php edit following parameters using particular details. /home/vol9/0fees.net/fees0_8291948/htdocs/ is example path of your folder of hosting in the server.


var $log_path = '/home/vol9/0fees.net/fees0_8291948/htdocs/logs';
var $tmp_path = '/home/vol9/0fees.net/fees0_8291948/htdocs/tmp';

var $dbtype = 'mysql';
var $host = 'Your SQL Host Name';
var $user = 'Your User Name';
var $password = 'Your Database Password';
var $db = 'Your Database Name';
var $dbprefix = 'jos_';

After editing save the file. Then using a FTP client upload all the files to hosting folder of your server. Do not upload Joomla folder, all the files and folders inb side it.
Then go your phpmyadmin of local host, and go to your Joomla database. In side that go to export tab.


Create a SQL file of your database using this. After that go to phpmyadmin of you hosting site. (You can find it in the control panel) Import the database there. After that your are done. Now you can go to your URL.
That is all, I think i give you some help.