The XAMPP documentation says that you should only use it for a development environment and not a production environment. I don't understand what this means. I want to develop my website locally using XAMPP, then upload it to my hosts server. Is that considered working in a production environment? I thought using a local host was by definition a development environment. If your going to produce the site that you build locally, when does it become a production environment?
Also, to do this what do you have to do? Is it just a matter of using an FTP client to transfer the files from XAMPP to the root of your domain name, or do you have to set a new database or something? I read that the server environment is different when you upload it to your host, so things may not work the same way as when you worked locally on them. So do you have to test different things or change certain things when you add the site to the internet, or can you make it public right away?
Comments
"Production environment"
"Production environment" just means the live site that the world visits. So you're doing it right--develop your site on XAMPP, then move it to an ISP.
Yes, you will need a database account on the production site, and you will need to export your development database (or at least all the tables) and import it into your new database.
Then you will need to FTP the Drupal files to your root folder on your ISP account, and (*this is important*) change settings.php to reflect the new connection data.
If you're lucky, that's all you need to do.