Duplicate existing site.
 

I've got a forum with a decent amount of template changes and mods. I had stumbled upon a walkthrough that outlined how to copy an existing site to a test forum, but I can't seem to locate it again. I am apparently having issues getting the correct search terms.

Can someone point me in the right direction? Thank you very much!

1. Copy the entire forums folder to a new location, this way your file/directory structure would remain intact.

2. For the database part, you can use the inbuilt vB's feature. Go to admincp->Maintainance->Database Backup. However, Database backup via PHP is only recommended for those with small databases as timeouts may occur. Saving to the server or backup via command line is more reliable.

You can try SQLYog. Its a wonderful application software to manage MySQL db's. I use the same. Not sure if it works on linux server as well (coz i'm on windows). Also, your host must allow external connections to database server. But, do try it. It has a free version too.

3. After completing the above processes, create a copy of config.php file, edit the values like forumpath and upload/overwrite it to the new location.

4. you can now login at the admincp of your test board. Do not forget to go to vB options->Site name/url/contact details->and edit the Forum URL value to he new test board's location.

I hope this helps !! :)

Don't forget to run a robots.txt to block the test site or remove your posts from the database on the test site.

Otherwise you might (probably will) get indexed with both url's for the same content which isn't a good thing. The test site should be transparent to others and should NOT be indexed if that's to be a reality. :)

Um, no. What he needs to do is htaccess protect it. Once he does that, he won't have to worry about spiders. (And I believe, that is part of the vbulletin license agreement for setting up test sites.)

Folks -
Thank you very much, I created a VM, followed the above instructions and got the site up and running in about 10 minutes.

Very much appreciate the help!

UMMM...
Good to know. Thanks