Helpful Plugins for Migrating WordPress from localhost to Production

There are some tutorials available for migrating a local instance of WordPress to a live instance for the world to see. In my case, I was ready to deploy some local development to the host, but in my case, I was adding a new custom child theme based on twenty-thirteen (it’s live at chocolateandcarrots.com). I was pursuing the path of creating a brand new instance of WordPress using a new, clean database, but problems arose when trying to import the content, specifically the post’s featured image. For some reason, the links would not update, even though everything was on the same server. I’d like to share some of the plugins I used for a smooth transition from local development to production:

• Search and Replace by Frank Bultge: This plugin allows to replace strings in the database. I mostly used this when downloading the production database and content (for offline development). I would essentially replace the host url with ‘localhost:8888′ (port 8888 since that’s the default set by MAMP), so all of the content would properly render.
• Regenerate Thumbnails by Viper007Bond: I’m sure I would have pulled my hair out if I didn’t find this plugin. Since the website I was working on is image heavy, having a featured post for the blog page was essential. After setting the custom thumbnail size in the WordPress admin area and adding the hook in functions.php, I fired up the plugin and it automagically reproduced thumbnails for my posts. Ahhh!

If you need to do some WordPress administration for batch jobs, I highly recommend these plugins.