Create a local copy of live Joomla website on Wamp server

Question

I checked all the previous questions related to mine, but nothing helped. I have a running website based on Joomla, I wanted to copy it to my local device for test reasons. I did exactly the steps which needed to be done to install the website which is:

• Took a backup from my website using Akeeba
• Copy my DB and create the same one locally
• Used Kickstart to unpack the backup files

then I tried to run my website (localhost/name); name= the name of the folder inside www directory where i unpacked my files in.

The result is:

• If i was connected to the internet then i'm redirected to the live site (the original one)
• If i'm not connected to the internet then nothing happens.

When I browse this URL : localhost/name/administrator
I have a box to put username and password after filling it I have a server failure.

Answer 1

If you're having trouble with Akeeba Backup, you should try to do all the work manually. It works for me, every-time .

Step 1: First download the whole Joomla directory using FileZilla client on your local machine. It should contain all the sub-folders : administrator,bin,includes,components,cache and so on including the configuration.php file.

Step 2 : Export a SQL copy of your Jdatabase using PHPmyAdmin (provided by your webhost)

• Open PHPmyAdmin.
• Select your database from the left side bar.
• Go to Export. then choose :
• Export Method: Quick - display only the minimal options.
  
• Format : SQL.
  
  and hit Go.

A SQL copy of your live Joomla database will get downloaded on your local machine.

Step 3 : Move all contents of the downloaded Joomla directory (from Step 1) to your Wamp local server's root directory.

Step 4 : Import your downloaded SQL copy on your local database using PHPmyAdmin (localhost/phpmyadmin)

- Choose file : select the downloaded SQL file from Step 2

Leave everything intact and hit Go.

Step 5 : Edit your configuration.php file.

Replace the $host, $user and $password values with this :

public $host = 'localhost';
public $user = 'root';
public $password = '';

Replace the value of $db with the name of your local database (on which you imported the SQL file in Step 4).

public $db = 'myLocalDatabase';

That's it. Your local copy is ready.

Answer 2

Check your configuration.php in site root folder manually (not through Global Configuration), and make sure that variable $live_site contains your localhost virtual domain name (if you created one), or it is empty (if you didn't create virtual host).
But make sure it doesn't contain your live site URL. That might be a reason for different outcome of accessing your local copy depending of Internet connectivity.