I want to develop locally with Multisite, then migrate each site to separate remote WP installs

I use WordPress for the majority of my client work. I develop locally with MAMP and then move the sites to the remote server when its time to go live or show the client the progress. I just migrate the files via FTP and export/import the database with phpMyAdmin, tweak the url and wp-config.php settings, etc.

This flow has been working fine, but lately I am tiring of having dozens of different WordPress installs on my local machine, having to go through the motions of setting up a new one every time, etc., and would like to streamline things by switching to Multisite.

But I need to be able to export and move each site to its own separate remote server. I’m not ready to us Multisite for my live sites, though it is a tempting idea from a maintenance standpoint.

Is the WordPress export function the best way to do this? I realize that I still have to move all of my media files if I do it this way. Does anyone know how Backup Buddy handles this? I’ve been thinking about throwing down for that service.

Thanks!

Using multisite to develop then export to a single install is a bad idea. For one multisite behaves different than a single install and you want your dev to as close to the production as possible.

It’s also a pain in the a** to manually export the right db tables then import them into a new database.

For developing locally I only use 2 or three WP installs. Your mainly working on theme files so just create a new theme for each project and you can even use one dev database and change the table prefix in wp-config.php so so you don’t have to create a new database each time.

See this answer for complete details on a nice streamlined local dev system to use.