I have a wordpress mu-site. I need to set up a test-version of it so that the client can run test on the changes we make, test the plugins with new updates etc.
Anybody who has worked with wordpress know it's a bit off a hassle to move between servers and/or domain-names, due to the absolute paths used. Does anybody have a good solution how to create a stage-enviorment of wordpress?
Here's how I do it + some adjustments I want to make:
Two WP installs on identical environments - dev & production
They each have their own FQDN
Version control (SVN in this case) to handle merges from dev to production
When merging, I don't ever merge database changes. I only merge code, and modify any of the domain specific things during the merge (which really should only be in the DB.)
Recreate any DB changes needed during deployment
There are other ways to do it, but they often require changing the hosts file or access to internal systems. So if you want to be able to show an external client a site, then those methods aren't likely to work.
I also sometimes copy the DB back from production to dev, and just do a find & replace for the FQDN.
You can also dev locally and use the above listed method for staging only.
Related
As in the topic.
I wonder since I cannot find this information anywhere and currently I am using a virtual machine (linux) on my vcenter which is cloned and then a special shell script is run on this freshly cloned machine to setup up environment and IP adresses etc.
Maybe I would be able to benefit from templates this way.
I think this will be helpful
https://www.robertparten.com/virtualization/vmware-difference-between-clone-and-template/
Few Differences in my opinion:-
Virtual machine is the running instance while Template is compact copy of VM ( with baseline and factory settings), which can be stored anywhere.
one need to deploy template to make running VM.
one can create copy from both VM and template but in VM you need to clone it and in case of template you need to deploy it.
moving between different setup is easy with template.
Rest are already mentioned in link provided.
But first you need to search on your own and still have doubts than only ask, that's how we all learn.
Happy Learning!
Looking at these two scenarios:
Create a template from your active VM, then deploy from the template.
Deploy from the active VM directly.
As far as I know, there will be no difference in the end result if you run these scenarios in the near future. You'll still have to run a script in order to get your IPs setup, etc.
So what's the difference?
If you mess stuff up with your active VM, change things around or whatever, you lose the ability to deploy from the (good) setup you had.
Once you make a template from your active VM, that configuration is saved as a file on the ESX (or the storage, not 100% sure) and can be re-deployed in the future.
I have a .htaccess that need to be tested. I can not put it on the server as it may cause the website to crash. I read this answer but did not get it. I also used htaccess tester website but although the htaccess works on this website, it does not work on my server; therefore, need to test it offline.
Create an identical copy of your "production" server, hosted on a different server. It can be your localhost, or another "staging" server. So it's not "off line"; rather, it's just not publicly accessible. Once the changes pass your tests in this staging area (aka user-acceptance test server), the changes can be promoted to the production environment. The final ingredient is to be sure you can quickly rollback to the previous version if there are any issues once you do rollout these changes; also, you should of course promote these changes during a period of low activity.
I would suggest to make a subdomain and test it in that. In this way you would not have any issues with the current website and no need to have a separate server.
I have about 5 sites where till date all development changes have happened directly on the live server, where the change would be made on a test file first and if ok, would replace it with the original file.
However, I can't really continue with this approach now because the site has become quite complex and testing changes usually involves changes to DB as well. I will also be having some outsourced developers working on the site. So now need to figure out how to set up an environment such that the dev. team can make changes to a test environment running perhaps on the same server, as a subdomain on the main domain perhaps, but not sure how to go about it.
Our sites are hosted on a single dedicated server with WHM/Cpanel setup. Now,
a) how do I go about creating a staging environment where they have access to the latest files and a db copy of the live db?
b) how do I track what all files they've changed/updated, so that I can then copy them to the live server and upload?
Is there some other approach I can/should consider? Am not really sure how to go about this.
I want to set up a production and development environment for a wordpress website. The Wordpress site uses a lot of plugins. These plugins consist of php files which I upload to a directory within the main wordpress directory.
When activating and modifying the plugins, much of the configurations are stored in the mysql database. Developing on wordpress means much of my "code" and "changes" are stored in the database, as opposed to physical files that can be committed to and updated from a CVS repository. So instead of having a CVS keep track of my changes, I have to frequently and manually do mysqldumps of the database on production and import it into the development server.
Is there a better way to set up a development and production environment where much of the development changes are happening in the database?
Use CVS's hooks to perform the dump whenever you commit. I'm not familiar with how CVS does them, since I've only done it with SVN. However, from reading a bit of the manual, it seems pretty similar.
This section of the CVS manual explains what happens, script-wise, when you commit. Take a look at the section further down, "C.4.4.2 Keeping a checked out copy". You should be able to modify this example to put in your mysqldump command.
I work on quite a few DotNetNuke sites, and occasionally (I haven't figured out the common factor yet), when I use the Database Publishing Wizard from Microsoft to create scripts for the site I've created on my Dev server, after running the scripts at the host (usually GoDaddy.com), and uploading the site files, I get an error... I'm 99.9% sure that it's not file related, so not sure where to begin in the DB. Unfortunately with DotNetNuke you don't get the YSOD, but a generic error, with no real way to find the actual exception that has occured.
I'm just curious if anyone has had similar deployment issues using the Database Publishing Wizard, and if so, how they overcame them? I own the RedGate toolset, but some hosts like GoDaddy don't allow you to direct connect to their servers...
The Database Publishing Wizard's generated scripts usually need to be tweaked since it sometimes gets the order wrong of table/procedure creation when dealing with constraints. What I do is first backup the database, then run the script, and if I get an error, I move that query to the end of the script. Continue restoring the database and running the script until it works.
There are two areas that I would look at -
Are you running in the dbo schema and was your scripted database
using dbo?
Are you using an objectqualifier in either your dev or your
production environment? (look at your sqldataprovider configuration
settings)
You should be able to expose the underlying error message by setting the following in the web.config:
customErrors mode="Off"
Could you elaborate on "and uploading the site files"? New instance of DNN? updating an existing site? upgrading DNN version? If upgrade or update -- what files are you adding/overwriting?
Also, when using GoDaddy, can you check to verify that the web site's identity (network service or asp.net machine account depending on your IIS version) has sufficient permissions to the website's file system? It should have modify permissions and these may need to be reapplied if you are overwriting files.
IIS6 (XP, Server 2000, 2003) = ASP.Net Machine Account
IIS7 (Vista, Server 2008) = Network Service
Test your generated scripts on a new local database (using the free SQL Express product or the full meal deal). If it runs fine locally, then you can be confident that it will run elsewhere, all things being equal.
If it bombs when you run it locally, use the process of elimination and work your way through the script execution to find the offending code.
My hunch is that the order of scripts could be off. I think I've had that happen before with the database publishing wizard.
Just read your follow up. In every case that I've had your problem, it was always something to do with the connection string in web.config. Even after hours of staring at it, it was always a connection string issue in web.config. Get up, take a walk and then come back.
If you are getting one of DNN's error pages, there is a chance it may have logged the error to the eventlog table.
Depending on exactly what is happening and what DNN is showing you you might be able to manually look inside the EventLog table, pull out the XML data stored there, and parse it to find the stack trace and detailed information regarding the specific error at hand.
I have found however though that I get MUCH better overall experiences with deployments using backups and restores of my database, that way I am 100% sure that all objects moved correctly, and honestly it works better in my experience.
With GoDaddy I know another MAJOR common issue is incorrect file permissions, preventing DNN from modifying the web.config and other files that it needs to do.