Moving from staging (MAMP) to live production server

Question

I'm a long time WordPress developer who's moved over to Craft CMS (loving it).

When moving over WordPress sites from MAMP to a live production server, I follow this process:

1. Upload all WP files to live server
2. Export database via phpMyAdmin
3. Create database on live server and import database dump
4. User search and replace tool to change URLs
5. Flush permalinks via WP admin

For Craft, I've done the following:

1. Upload all Craft files to live server
2. Export database from CP in Craft
3. Create database on live server and import Craft DB zip
4. Via live Craft CP, change Site URL and Asset URL

Everything is working perfectly, but I just want to check I hadn't missed anything here? Not having to do a search and replace is awesome.

Answer 1

Everything looks good to go more or less, but #4 can be improved upon by creating a multi-environment config file. This way, instead of having to change your site urls and base path (for assets) in the event you want to overwrite your local db with your live site db to sync it up, you just use a variable in the CMS like {siteUrl} or {basePath} that's set in your config file.

nystudio107 has a great article walking you through setting up a great multi-environment.

If you're feeling even more adventurous, I also highly suggest his Database & Asset Syncing article that allows you to run a command from your terminal to instantly pull down and import a copy of your database/assets from any environment you want into your local.