I planned to record a Loom video showing how to deploy with Duplicator rather than All-In-One WP Migration. However, Loom is currently not cooperating. So here is a rough guide how to do it.
- In your Local (MAMP) site, update your themes and plugins.
- Uninstall and then delete any unused plugins. Definitely uninstall All-In-One-Migration
- In the Duplicator window, go to where you make packages. Make sure that no previous packages are there (you don’t want an older Duplicator archive increasing the file size of your new Duplicator archive).
- Go to wp-config.php and set DEBUG to FALSE. You can set it back to true later if you need to do more local development.
- Make your Duplicator package. Put the installer and archive in a folder. Give it a name that will name sense for your URL (ie final-project or portfolio, etc)
- Log into Plesk.
- In (Langara) Plesk, delete previous WordPress installations.
- In Plesk, go to the DATABASES section.
- Make a new database. Make the name obscure with random letters and numbers. Copy that information to a text file.
- Make a new database user. Make the name obscure with random letters and numbers. Copy that to a text file.
- Make a password for this database user. Make the password obscure with all kinds of random characters. Copy that to a text file.
- In the Plesk File Manager, upload the folder to your httpdocs folder.
- Now in a web browser, go to the URL of the installer. For example, something like
https://yourname.plesk.wmdd-wordpress.com/palebluerubberchicken/installer.php - This should bring up the Duplicator interface you are already familiar with.
- For the database, database user, database user pw, use the values in the text file.
- For the host, just use localhost
Run through the installation as normal. You can create the extra admin account as part of this process, then log in and delete the your-name admin user (assigning all posts to an author or editor account you’ve hopefully already created).
After logging in, go to Settings > Permalinks and set your permalink structure (category/postname is typical).
Now do all of the PLESK security hardening that we have covered in other videos and classes: a Duplicator installation needs to be hardened. The PLESK Security features (with the checklist of hardening options) will help you do that.
Set your themes, plugins and WordPress itself to autoupdate.
Now set up TwoFactorAuthentication with WordFence. Do NOT set up the WordFence firewall.
Finally, set up Automated Backup with Updraft Plus.
There are videos in the course content showing you how to do these post-install tasks.