Transferring a development site to a live site will overwrite the existing live site and replace it with the content backed up from the development site. What is required is a way to “merge” the development and live site, without losing the valuable user-generated content. This walkthrough describes the steps to this process using Akeeba Backup.

1. Advanced Site Transfers
with Akeeba Backup
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2. Hi, I’m
Nicholas
Dionysopoulos
and I bet you can’t
pronounce my last
name
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3. Framing the issue
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4. Site transfers are easy, but…
Transferring a site
replaces
an existing one
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5. Why is that a problem?
Live site and dev site start as identical twins
You redesign the dev site = changes
The live site is ever changing = even more changes
The two sites have now floated too far apart
How do you combine two sites into one site without
data loss?
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6. Ever changing live sites?!
New or updated users
Forum posts
Comments
Sales
Any other kind of user submitted information
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7. To the rescue!
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8. A man with a plan
1.Identify changing data
2.Exclude them from the dev site backup
3.Merge the two sites
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9. Excluding users’ tables
• Joomla! 1.5 • Joomla! 1.6
➡ #__users ➡ #__users
➡ #__core_acl_aro ➡ #__user_usergroup_
➡ #__core_acl_groups_ map
aro_map ➡ #__user_profiles
Don’t forget user mapping tables
from other components!
(forum, K2, download system, ...)
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10. Excluding tables
• Not an exact science. Be patient and careful!
• Tables are usually named like jos_component_table,
e.g. jos_k2_items
• Exclude tables which have changed on the live site
• If unsure, ask the component’s author
• You can’t merge two versions of the same table
• Use Database Table Exclusion to exclude them
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11. Database table exclusion
Example: Excluding K2’s items from the backup
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12. Excluding files and folders
• No need to exclude extensions
• Good candidates for consideration:
✓ Avatars (JomSocial, Community Builder)
✓ E-shop product images (VirtueMart, Tienda, redShop)
✓ Forum attachments (NinjaBoard, Kunena, Agora)
✓ Downloads (ARS, DOCman, RokDownloads)
• If unsure, ask the component’s developer
• Use “Files and Directories Exclusion” to exclude them
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13. Things to never do
• Skip the contents of the table instead of excluding it
• Use the “Extensions Filter” feature
• Have users add/modify articles on the live site while
you modify the same or different articles on the dev
site.
• Take separate database and file backups
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14. Test merge
• Backup the live site and restore locally to a test site.
• Backup the dev site and restore on top of the test site.
• Check the new site
‣ Missing users
‣ Logging in as a user created just before the test merge
‣ Scrutinized review of your site’s features
‣ Also try creating users, posts, test sales, etc.
• Is everything working? If not, review your exclusions!
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15. Live merge
• Backup the live site and keep a local copy!
• Put your live and dev sites off-line.
• Backup the dev site.
• Uninstall extensions from the live site that were uninstalled on
the dev site.
• Restore the dev site backup on top of the live site.
• Check that everything works. If not, restore from backup.
• Put the live site on-line.
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16. Questions?
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17. That’s all folks!
Download this presentation & accompanying PDF:
http://akeeba.info/site-transfers
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