What steps do I need to take to install a local copy of a live website?

wp-cli makes use of your wp-config.php credentials to connect to the db, so the fact that you are getting the install screen, and not getting any errors (I assume) when running wp-cli commands says that you seem to have it configured correctly. My only thought would be that your $table_prefix value doesn’t match the tables … Read more

I want to share local developement and staging DB — Is this very smart or very stupid?

WordPress, and many of its plugins, store configuration data in the database. That alone could cause issues for the setup you described, but the urls of every link will also be stored fully canonicalized. So, unless you plan to test your staging setup from “http://localhost“, you will have serious issues trying to click around multiple … Read more