It’s quite difficult to keep data from a dev version in sync with data on the production site. But for an initial deployment, you are correct that it requires changes to wp-config.php and the database.
- Install WordPress on your dev machine, e.g. dev.example.com/blog/
- Install WordPress on your production machine, preferably with the same folder structure as the dev box, e.g. www.example.com/wordpress/
- note: your wp-config.php settings will be different on production. That’s fine, just maintain a safe copy of the file and do not overwrite.
- Sync the /wp-content/ directory from dev to production (themes, plugins, etc)
- Using PHPMyAdmin or similar, export the contents of your dev database to a text file
- In the text file, replace any instances of the dev url with the production url (dev.example.com/wordpress/ => www.example.com/wordpress/). This will change the siteurl as well as any links to images in the posts
- Using PHPMyAdmin or similar, import the contents of your dev database to the production database
- Try accessing the WordPress admin module in the production server – you should be good to go.
This technique works for me, but I’d love to hear of any cleaner migration techniques.
UPDATE: There are a number of techniques discussed in the following post, including a plugin that handles the db grunt work:
How to: Easily Move a WordPress Install from Development to Production?