I have a Joomla 1.5 site on my localhost. It’s hosted on a public hosting server as well.
I was wondering what is the best way to do incremental updates to the site? I mean I don’t want to update the whole site, if I just changed one source file (html, php, images, etc) or made changes to the database. I understand, to be safe I’d have to update the database every time (export from local and import in remote), but I’m sure we can avoid unnecessary uploads of unchanged files.
I’ve seen https://www.akeebabackup.com and it doesn’t offer what I need. One option is to use an ftp client (like Filezilla) which does folder synchronizations, but I’m not sure they work very well.
For database you could use master-master replication, which is quite easy to set up but you need GRANT privileges in MySQL, which most likely won’t be possible on a shared hosting. I’d also suggest connection both machines via VPN to make it more secure.
The other easy way to sync databases is “Synchronisation” tool if you’re using phpmyadmin.
If not, look at any MySQL planning software like MySQL Workbench, which also has this feature built-in.
You didn’t tell what privileges you have to access the public hosting server.
If you’re an admin you can have SVN admin installed and configured to sync files with your local data.
You can also have a GIT repository to do exactly the same, or LDAP set-up via VPN to keep your files in sync.
If you’re not an admin just see or ask your hosting company what’s of the above is available, I’m sure they’ll be able to help you. Nowadays, hosting companies have SVN or GIT installed, which should be what you need.
I often use SVN tools built-in PHP Designer 8, but you can have SVN, GIT and many more also in NetBeans.