Localhost wordpress site redirects to public site

Question

On my Mac, I modified the VirtualHost:

<VirtualHost *:80>
  DocumentRoot "/Users/me/Documents/github/gps_cms"
 ServerName gps_cms
 </VirtualHost>

That is so I can type gps_cms in URL and invoke the web page on localhost.

However, when I type in:

http://gps_cms/wp-admin

It redirects to my main site:

http://example.com/wp-admin/upgrade.php?_wp_http_referer=%2Fwp-admin%2F

And the content on page is this:

No Update Required

Your WordPress database is already up-to-date!

Answer 1

WordPress will try to redirect you to the canonical URL for the site, as set in the database during the initial install. But you can override it in the wp-config.php file by setting the WP_HOME constant:

http://codex.wordpress.org/Editing_wp-config.php#Blog_address_.28URL.29

If WP is installed in a subdirectory, you might also need to set WP_SITEURL.