I’ll offer a couple alternatives to @jgraup but his suggestions are all good ones. I also must note that I use macOS so some of the particulars of these suggestions won’t work on a PC but there should be equivalents. If my client(s) already have a site up using maindomain.com, I will usually set up … Read more
Copy the keys and salts from the production site? Try updating the password with WP-CLI?
How to query a staging database?
If your friend has a wordpess.com business account which im guessing she has if she is using woocommerce you can always go down the plugin route. if you want to move to a stage variant you could possibly use WP Staging plugin which will give you a copy of the site to play with if … Read more
I’d like to understand how commonly a 3rd party installed/activated plugins will make (structural) DB changes? All the time for non bug fix releases. No matter what the plugin does, there are very few features that do not require some settings. One way around this is to minimize the use of plugins. The other way … Read more
I recommend using Search & Replace DB, a free tool by Interconnect, to replace any instances of the host name in the database. It will handle setting the serialized data correctly for you. First make sure that your wp-config is for the right database. You need to go into your new database and change the … Read more
Most plugins store their settings in the database. So whenever you push code from one site to another, you need to at least push the plugin-specific data along with your files. You could hire a developer to determine where the plugin is storing data, or if you’re comfortable using phpMyAdmin, you can use that and … Read more
Scripts/styles not loading on cloned WP Site when logged in
This is a common issue. Unfortunately, it is just one of many possible symptoms of incorrectly moving a WordPress site to a new url. The solution is to ensure that WordPress (core, plugins and theme) and your web server are all using the same URL. If you have an SSL cert for the staging site … Read more
WordPress Staging site is redirecting to live and lost the child theme