I would like to create a sandbox so I can test stuff out before putting it on my public site. So it occurred to me that I could create a subdomain and restore a backup to the subdomain.
It worked - sort of. My site is hosted on bluehost and the domain is xyz.com so I created a subdomain called restore. Then I unzipped a backup into the "restore" folder. Then I used mysql manager to create a new DB and I used phpmyadmin to import the .sql file created by the backup. Next I changed site_url and home_url to point to xyz.com/restore. And after that I changed wp-config.php to have the new db name, user name and password.
It worked okay. I could open xyz.com and xyz.com/restore. I gave each its own background so I would be able to tell which was which. But then I found a problem.
Whenever I click on a menu link from the restore site I end up back on the original site.
Can anyone tell me why?
Thanks!