Changing the home and siteurl in your wp_options table is not enough unfortunately. You will still have your post content with your non-localhost URL (http://www.thesite.com) causing your website to not display properly on your localhost.
You should have the wp_options table on your localhost copy. Everything should be intact. To make sure exported your database from your live site correctly, please follow these quick instructions provided by WordPress.
Once you’ve downloaded and imported your database to your localhost. Follow these steps:
- Go and download Interconnect IT’s Database Search & Replace Script here
- Unzip the file and drop the folder in your localhost where your WordPress is installed (the root) and rename the folder to
replace(screenshot) - Navigate to the new folder you created in your browser (ex:
http://localhost:8888/localsite/replace) and you will see the search/replace tool - It should be pretty self-explanatory up to this point: enter your old URL in the
search for…field and the new URL in thereplace with…field
You can click the dry run button under actions to see what it will be replacing before you execute the script. Once you’re done be sure to remove the /replace/ folder.