Info: I would like to set up a VM server on my local computer which will serve pages in the exact same way as my current hosting (but only to me on my local computer). I currently pay a big web hosting company to host my website & web store and they are doing a great job, but I would like to be able to work on my Web site and its corresponding MySQL DB, HTML, and PHP code without being at risk of messing something completely up on the live servers.

My current plan of action:

1. Set up a VM webserver with Debian, MySQL, PHP, Apache.
2. Copy web store (PHP/HTML) code to VM server.
3. Copy my current MySQL databases from my hosting provider and install on VM server.
4. Modify and test new features on VM server.
5. Upload MySQL DB and HTML/PHP code back to web host's server where it should work as before but with new modifications.

Questions: Now I'm pretty sure I have steps one and two down correctly but I can't for the life of me figure out how to proceed next, so here are my questions.

I have my /etc/host file set up so www.MySite.test redirects to the IP address of the local VM webserver. Once I import my PHP/HTML files and MySQL file whats the best way to navigate around the fact that all of my files and DBs will reference www.MySite.com.

I can export my MySQL dbs but do I also have to export my MySQL users and passwords to access those db or are those coded into my html/php code?