Thanks Bob, we really appreciate your offer to help us out - very kind.
Here are the things we’re not sure about (pretty much all of it sorry!) - assuming we didn’t modify the ht.access file during local development.
1.
Install the site locally, renaming and editing the .htaccess file to indicate the subdirectory you are deploying your site into in the test environment, as in the following example with a local development copy of the MODx CMS site at /localhost/modxcms/:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
# If your MODx installation is in a subdirectory, change the following line to
# match the physical path to the "root" of the site as follows:
# RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /path/to/subdirectory/index.php?q=$1 [L,QSA]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /modxcms/index.php?q=$1 [L,QSA]
For some reason our Modx site doesn’t have an ht.access file in the root directory (have also checked in Terminal incase it was a OSX GUI thing). We do have one inside the /manager directory but it looks different to the example in the Wiki:
RewriteEngine Off
<IfModule mod_security.c>
# Turn the filtering engine Off
SecFilterEngine Off
</IfModule>
After developing the site locally (using all relative paths from the site root, to keep it portable), make a copy of .htaccess and call it .htaccess.local, editing the path on the .htaccess file for the remote deployment location as appropriate (usually removing the subdirectory path). The .htaccess file in /manager should be left as it is.
Not sure what "edit the remote deployment location as appropriate" specifically means we should change our file to be - plus we don’t have any subdirectory in our htaccess file because of the reason above.
3.
Then make a copy of manager/includes/config.inc.php as config.local.inc.php, and edit config.inc.php with the remote database connection settings for the deployment server (the remote db must be already created and ready to use)
This makes sense - essentially this file gives Modx access to the MySQL database on the hosting server and you have to have a database already set up - presumably giving the host database the same name as the local one?
4.
Copy the /manager, /assets, /index.php, and /.htaccess folders and files to the target LAMP server (you can optionally exclude *.local.*). If this is an upgrade and not a new installation, make sure to save your remote site’s /assets folder first, then you can re-upload all of your existing content, such as images and templates, if the upload has overwritten any of it.
Not sure what a LAMP server is - is that MAMP but with an L for Linux maybe? Also, not sure why you only copy those files - wouldn’t I want to copy everything like my flash banners and xml folder etc?
6.
Dump the local DB contents (use the Backup Manger, or any MySQL client such as phpMyAdmin) and then execute the SQL dump in the target DB on the remote LAMP server (most hosting environments use phpMyAdmin for this). You will probably want to empty any log tables before backing them up, or else you’ll have rows and rows of log data useless to your new server.
Not sure what "Dump" means and don’t really understand what is being said here. We’re guessing this is how you copy the tables out of the local database? We can’t find the "Backup Manager" in phpMyAdmin (have searched their wiki as well) but we can see import and export tabs under our database (both locally and on the remote host) - can we not use these? We’re assuming the Backup Manager will create a file that we import into our LAMP server - is this what "execute the SQL dump in the target DB" means? Also, not sure about the log tables but maybe this is all self-evident?
7.
Access the remote manager’s Adminstration -> System configuration and change the paths for the resource browser (Resource Path and Resource URL in System Settings -> Interface & Editor Settings tab) and the filemanager (File Manager Path at System Settings -> Miscellaneous Settings tab)
Again, can’t quite figure out where this is. We’ve chosen (mt) as our host (unless people have a better recommendation) and can’t figure out where this might be - have dug around the (mt) control panel as well as phpMyAdmin but can’t see Resource Path or File Manager Path. Also, once we find it, what do we change the paths to or maybe this is self evident?
Sorry we didn’t really understand any of what was written in the Wiki.
☆ A M B ☆