Migrating the files but not the database

With any sort of e-commerce site, it's always on, and always accepting new orders and payments and marking items as shipped. Because of this, if you ever replace a live database with a test database, you could have catastrophic results. It will often take days or weeks to make a test site, test the changes, and get them approved. In that time frame, there will very often be a new order and if you replace the live database with the test database, you erase all records of that order. If you're lucky, there will still be an email sent to you and the customer but you'll have no other records, which is a bad spot to be in.

This is why you'll never want to overwrite the live database. You'll want to work with a host that can let you move your code to your live site and leave the live database intact. Or you'll want to have your own processes to quickly move all files from your test site to your live site.

There are a couple of hosts worth mentioning that have a really nice infrastructure that helps you to build great WooCommerce sites:

• WP Engine (https://wpengine.com/)
• Pantheon (https://pantheon.io/)
• Liquid Web (https://www.liquidweb.com/)

These hosts will be able to help you to migrate just the files you want without moving the database. If you want to use another host, just make sure they have the infrastructure to migrate files between a test and a live website.

And if you're wondering why I'm mentioning hosts instead of local development software, that's because it's important in e-commerce to develop sites with a publicly accessible URL.