Stuck - Setting up local and external Wordpress using Mamp Pro

Right... don't know why I couldn't log back in with my username password, tried to get a new one and it said it didn't recognise my email... oh well just my luck!

It had nothing to do with http://dyndns.org or settings, it was down to me not realising I had to change all the links in Wordpress to the dyndns address I had set up and thought I would post this just in case other newbies find it useful.

I changed the 2 url options in the general settings in Wordpress - now I have set them both to the dynDNS host address I had set up.

However I found the images would still not show and I realised that I would have to go into Wordpress and change all the links from their local address to the new dynDNS address.

I used this method first http://www.designshifts.com/how-to-move ... hpmyadmin/

There is also a WordPress plugin that might be a little easier to use http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/search-and-replace/ (Just be very careful when using either of these methods and back up your database before changing anything)

I have learnt quite a bit over the last few days, but probably wouldn't have bothered developing the sites locally if I had realised all the faff involved. I had stupidly thought that using WordPress, Mamp Pro and DynDNS together would dynamically change everything for me. The Mamp Pro literature makes it sound very easy to go from a local to external setup with a few clicks, but I have not found that to be the case when using WordPress. WordPress uses absolute paths by default and it is not recommended to use Relative paths apparently.

So when I eventually move the site to the live host I will have to go through the whole process again.

If it's diverting back to localhost then that suggests that either:

1. All the links have http://localhost/ at the start
2. The MAMP server is configured to think that it is localhost and to redirect all connections to that hostname

Without knowing the actual hostname we can only guess unfortunately. We'd also need to know what version of MAMP you've installed. I'm guessing that your problem is the first (all links include locahost) - if you check the pages you've created they should show you (don't view them through the web browser, but the tool you've used to create them).

You may however find that you get better help on the MAMP forums, since there you'll find people who known MAMP well and your problem is clearly with MAMP and not DynDNS's services.

The host name is http://testfour.dyndns.org

All your links start http://localhost/ - possibly created by the tool you're using to create the files.

I am a bit confused by the localhost thing, I thought Mamp Pro and DynDNS would dynamically change the links so I wouldn't have to run 2 versions of the website simultaneously (local and external)

Don't forget - other than resolving the hostname to the IP address you provide, DynDNS aren't involved in any way in the connections to your MAMP server. The right thing to do is always to provide relative links - you only include the hostname when connecting outside of your server. If no hostname is provided in the link then the browser will automatically connect using the hostname it first used to connect to the server. That means it will work whether you use the DynDNS hostname, the WAN IP, the LAN IP or any other hostname or IP address that resolves to the server.

At this point I'd suggest you look at the tool you're using to create your web pages and ensure it's not hard coding http://localhost/ in every link.

Basically this looks exactly the same as the testfour version except the links are no longer trying to access locally - unfortunately they just are not recognised at all.

That's because you've just changed the problem from being http://localhost/ to being http://testfive/. You must remove the leading http://testfive/ from every link on your site. Links within your site should only start with /, nothing else.

What tool are you using to create your web pages? Have you configured it to add those prefixes, or is that the tool's (broken) default?

Ok I have now managed to remove the local host part of the problem.

I am now onto testfive - http://testfive.dyndns.org

Basically this looks exactly the same as the testfour version except the links are no longer trying to access locally - unfortunately they just are not recognised at all.