Reindexing process problem: possible to upload db from localhost?

Question

Magento Version:1.9 (latest), Linux Hosted

I had a Magento website. I added a few configurable products and the error about reindexing process started appearing. As there was nothing I could do, I deleted my website and installed it again. Just after a few amendments the error started appearing again. My php memory limit is set to 256 at max by my host, which I think is the reason for this to happen.

My question is: Is it possible to install and configure magento on my localhost (using xampp or wamp) and then transfer the database with all the stuff there on my remote host?

Answer 1

If you can access the sources and the DB, you'll be able to do a complete transfer to your localhost. Just be sure to change the values for the DB in /app/etc/local.xml and also change the values of the 2 following entries in your core_config_data table
web/unsecure/base_url AND web/secure/base_urlthis way you'll be able to change the URL of your site, or if you want to use the same URL as you used to on your host provider, just change your windows host to make it look for your localhost rather than the distant server.

Or, you could try and higher the memory limit, because 256 megs are certainly really low for a Magento website.

Answer 2

@Reindex Problem: Could also be a timeout issue if you reindex via Backend (default timeout 30 seconds).

Try to reindex from shell command line:

Go to your magento root folder (e.g. /var/www/yourmagentoshop) and run

php -f ./shell/indexer.php help         shows indexer.php commands 
php -f ./shell/indexer.php info         shows what indexes can be rebuilt using this script 
php -f ./shell/indexer.php reindexall                         reindexes everything 
php -f ./shell/indexer.php --reindex catalog_url              takes care of the first 
php -f ./shell/indexer.php --reindex catalogsearch_fulltext   takes care of the second 

My shop has 4,000 sku getting some times the timeout error, using the command line it works.

@XAMPP Installation: I have my development environment on XAMPP running. Magento itself will run, but maybe some additional extensions will not as windows is not official supported e.g. file system operations.