How to Copy/Move a Drupal/Acquia Site

Moving a Drupal site isn't as easy as copying content, or even jsut copying the database, especially if you are changing URLs, server names, database names, etc. This article assumes a Drupal site deployed in IIS 7.5 with Web Platform tools, but most of the steps are either compatible with, or have alternatives with other stacks.

To move/copy a Drupal/Acquia site there are a few pieces to consider:

• Site Content
• Site content variables
• Site Database
• IIS/Acquia helpers

The workable process to move/copy a site is this (for our example we will use a server called web01):

1. Right click on the site you want to copy in IIS and select the deploy/export, and export the entire site to a zip file
   • Alternately, you can just zip up the entire content folder for this site (typically a folder somewhere under \inetpub)
2. Use phpMyAdmin to export the database used by the site to a .sql file
3. Use the IIS deploy/import function to import the last exported zip file into the new site, make sure to remove the subpath as you want this application deployed into the root
   • Alternately (per the zip method) in file explorer copy the entire site folder to a new folder and name it per the new site
4. Create a new site in IIS (defaults) and point it to this folder
5. Use phpMyAdmin to create a new empty database for the new site
6. Use phpMyAdmin to import the /sql file you exported into this new database
7. Use phpMyAdmin 'privileges' tab to grant the appropriate permissions to the drupaluser account (global)
8. Go into the new site content folders and navigate to [new site]/site/default and edit the settings.php file, change the db connection string to the name of the new db
9. Use a browser to connect to the new site to "http://[new_site]/install.php" ; this page should say it is already installed and have no errors
10. The go to the URL   "http://[new_site]/?q=user/login and login
11. Then go to the URL "http://[new_site]/update.php" , use the site maintenance link to put the site in offline mode, then use the update function to update the site
12. Use the maintenance link again to put the site back online again
13. Go to the "site configuration/site information" menu and change the site name to the public URL of the new site
14. You are finished!