Backing up locally

[Meddysong]

I'm going to have extremely limited internet for the next week but still have to do my work. Not a problem: I can install a backup of my site locally and develop some CSS, Pages etc offline, then paste them over when I'm back online.

What I don't understand is how. I would've thought it involved downloading files, importing the SQL, changing conf_global.php, and resetting the license key to be the TESTINSTALL version. This isn't working for me; my home page is an error (Something went wrong. Please try again. Error code: EX4096) and all links produce a message 'The requested URL /eab/eab/about/ was not found on this server.'

I can log into the ACP by typing the admin address into the bar but I frequently get errors, be it a message that such and such template is out of date, or

ErrorException: Method IPS\DateTime::__toString() must return a string value (4096)
#0 C:\wamp64\www\eab\applications\core\extensions\core\Dashboard\AdminNotes.php(55): IPS\IPS::errorHandler(4096, 'Method IPS\\Date...', 'C:\\wamp64\\www\\e...', 55, Array)
#1 C:\wamp64\www\eab\applications\core\modules\admin\overview\dashboard.php(59): IPS\core\extensions\core\Dashboard\_AdminNotes->getBlock()
#2 C:\wamp64\www\eab\system\Dispatcher\Controller.php(96): IPS\core\modules\admin\overview\_dashboard->manage()
#3 C:\wamp64\www\eab\system\Dispatcher\Dispatcher.php(146): IPS\Dispatcher\_Controller->execute()
#4 C:\wamp64\www\eab\admin\index.php(14): IPS\_Dispatcher->run()
#5 {main}

I've run the support tool and at its insistence downloaded a fresh copy of my suite and overwritten these local ones. Still the same problems show themselves.

I don't understand. Every few months I get the idea to do this and every few months waste hours trying to find out why it isn't working.

What am I missing? What's wrong with the approach I set out above? How are we supposed to go about setting up a local version of a live site for testing purposes?

 

[CP_User]

There is a detailed guide here on the forums, I hope there is some help in there for yourself.

 

[Meddysong]

Thank you for taking the time to share that. Unfortunately, the starting point is 3.x so isn't the same. Nonetheless, the steps he outlines (copy files, export database, change config file) are the same as made sense to me and which I carried out.