Easy Site Migration Using cURL
Any web developer will tell you that moving a website from one server to another or creating a local development environment based on an existing site is not always an easy task. With many of these giant frameworks (WordPress, Drupal, Laravel, Symfony, etc.) gaining popularity, it will be necessary for a developer to know how to migrate a site quickly and effectively. Using FileZilla is effective but can take way too long.
I have found the best way is by zipping all the files into a nice and compact compression file and then using cURL on the target machine to download the zip file. Then unzip it! Let’s go through each of these steps below.
Log onto the production server.
ssh username@production.com
Move into the site folder. The name of the folder may be different depending on your host.
cd www
Zip up all the files into a file called transfer.zip. To make sure you get all the files, even the hidden ones such as .htaccess files, make sure you use . as the directory to start at. Notice we are also going to recursively zip the files so that we get all the files in all the directories.
zip -r transfer.zip .
Now log onto the target server. If you are using a local environment, then you can disregard this step.
ssh username@development.com
Navigate to the folder that will be used for the development environment and download the transfer.zip from the production server using cURL.
cd public_html/example_dev.com
curl -o transfer.zip http://example.com/transfer.zip
This will download the transfer.zip to the development server. Now we just need to unzip it!
unzip transfer.zip
There you have it. All your files have been migrated to a new development environment for you to test new additions to your site.
Wrapping Up
Site migration does not have to be a dreadful thing that takes hours. Using this simple method, development environments can be set up with ease, leaving you and your team with more time to spend on projects that make you money! And we all love money, right?