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Push the Local WordPress site to InstaWP ​

InstaWP allows you to push your local WordPress site with its latest update of the Connect plugin. The users can effortlessly upload the entire locally developed website (whether on LocalWP, XAMPP, MAMP, or WAMP) to InstaWP, with just a few simple clicks. With the InstaWP Connect plugin, the process is now streamlined, quicker, more straightforward, and more dependable than ever.

In this documentation, we will explore the steps to push your local WordPress site to InstaWP.

Let’s get started 🚀

Install the LocalWP application in your system and setup the local site. Install the InstaWP Connect plugin on your local site. You will be navigated to this screen after setting up your local site.

Before you start ​

You need a paid plan. The local push is not available on a free account — the plugin screen shows a notice to that effect. Any current paid tier (Sandbox upward) includes the SSH, SFTP and WP-CLI access this flow relies on.

You need WP-CLI. The push is run with a WP-CLI command, so WP-CLI has to be installed and on your PATH on the machine hosting the local site:

  • LocalWP ships WP-CLI inside its Site Shell, so there is nothing to install.
  • XAMPP, MAMP and WAMP do not ship WP-CLI. Install it first — see the WP-CLI installation guide.

One command, every operating system. Because it is a WP-CLI command, it is byte-for-byte the same on Windows, macOS and Linux:

bash
wp instawp local push

It is a fixed string — nothing in it is specific to your site or your account. The link to your InstaWP account comes from the connection you made in Step 3, not from the command. The only thing that differs between setups is how you open a shell at your site's root folder, which is covered in Step 5 below.

Push Your Local Site to InstaWP ​

Step 1: Go to your local site and click on the WP Admin button to enter the site's admin panel.

Step 2: Select Tools > InstaWP from the options. Click on the Connect with InstaWP button.

Step 3: Connect the plugin with your local site on your WordPress account. You will prompted with a window to approve the Requested access type. Click on the Approve button.

You can visit this doc to set up a new connection.

Step 4: Copy the command from the plugin dashboard.

Step 5: Open a terminal at the root folder of your local WordPress site. How you do that depends on which local stack you use:

Local stackHow to open a shell at the site root
LocalWP (Windows & macOS)Switch back to the LocalWP window and click Site shell. It opens a terminal already at the site root, with WP-CLI available.
XAMPP (Windows, macOS, Linux)Open Command Prompt / PowerShell / Terminal and cd into your site's folder under htdocs, e.g. cd C:\xampp\htdocs\mysite.
WAMP (Windows)Open Command Prompt or PowerShell and cd into your site's folder under www, e.g. cd C:\wamp64\www\mysite.
MAMP (macOS)Open Terminal and cd into your site's folder under htdocs, e.g. cd /Applications/MAMP/htdocs/mysite.
Plain macOS or Linux (built-in Apache/nginx, Valet, Docker, etc.)Open Terminal and cd into the WordPress root, e.g. cd ~/Sites/mysite.

Which folder is the "site root"?

It is the directory that contains wp-includes/version.php — that is the marker WP-CLI itself looks for. If wp core version prints a version number, you are in the right place. (Do not go by wp-config.php alone: WordPress allows it to sit one level above the site root.)

Step 6: Paste the copied command into that shell and hit Enter. It archives your local site's files and database, creates a new site on your InstaWP account, and uploads everything to it.

Why this works from localhost ​

A local site has no public address, so nothing on the internet can reach into it — which is exactly why moving a local site to a host is normally awkward.

The InstaWP push sidesteps that entirely: it makes an outbound connection from your machine to InstaWP over SFTP and uploads the archives, the same direction as any other request your computer makes. Nothing has to connect in to your machine, so you do not need a public URL, a tunnel (ngrok, Cloudflare Tunnel), or any port forwarding or firewall change.

| 💡 Did you know - Your staging site's content can be downloaded into a zip file that you can then import to another WordPress site or host. Learn about Export your staging site.

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