[development] Staging content to production servers

[Khalid B]

> Alan -- thanks for this write up. I think the staging/production
> server issue is one that merits attention. A lot of times, it means
> we're running without a safety net -- it is too hard to merge
> (config, content) changes between a dev site and a live site...so
> lots of people just don't, or do extra work in re-doing the same
> config steps on a live site.

Boris/Alan

I have had clients ask me on this as well. The idea is to have a production
server than no one posts content to directly, and a staging server where
content is posted, edited, refined, ..etc. Then a button is clicked to push
selected content from the staging to the production.

Perhaps a starting point would be something similar to the Node Import/Export
that Jeremy Epstein is writing as part of SoC.

If this is coupled with:

a) an API that modules can use to push/pull their own data along with
what core does.

b) an XML RPC or some other protocol for sending the data from one
server to the other.

c) Users and roles as well.

d) all of the above is configurable (push content only, content + comments,
users only, user + roles, all the above)

If this happens, we can have truly federated servers and other neat things.
For example, this can be the solution for sharing of users and roles across
sites. If the sites are multi site on the same physical server, or across the
globe, it will still work.

Just some thoughts.