[support] Staging

[Zohar Stolar]

Don't cross-post Christopher.
Since you raised this issue, it has been extensively discussed on the 
development list (see threads: "Solving the dev->staging->live problem" 
and "Unique/Random IDs and drupal")



Christopher M. Jones wrote:

> Thanks, Zohar.
>
> Unfortunately, I see that this module is available only for 5.x. We 
> want to use 6.x. Still, it's an excellent lead, though I doubt my 
> company wants to pay me to port that module to 6.x. Maybe we should 
> step down to 5.x.
>
> Also, I'll forward my message on to the dev list, as you suggested.
>
> Zohar Stolar - Linnovate wrote:
>> Hi Christopher,
>>
>>
>> First of all, I advise you to consider cross-posting the mail in the 
>> development list. While you need a straight answer, which is kind of 
>> a support request, your insights might make others re-think how 
>> Drupal's database is built, and how we can make it (even) easier to 
>> develop Drupal site over many years.
>>
>>
>> Secondly, I was wondering with yhager about having a BoF meeting in 
>> Szeged, since the situation you are experiencing is one of the most 
>> common issues with Drupal development. Since Configuration and 
>> Content are kept on the same DB, it is practically impossible to 
>> export only some of the data (for example only content, or only 
>> configuration).
>>
>> We were wondering how come everyone is suffering, and no one speaks 
>> :)  We finally let go of the idea.
>>
>>
>> However, if there is enough interest, maybe we can still organize a 
>> BoF in Szeged. And that's the second reason why I think you should 
>> cross-post in the dev list - maybe we'll see that there is enough man 
>> power to advance in this matter soon.
>>
>>
>> oh... and... sorry for the situation you're in, Unfortunately, I 
>> don't have a winning advice ;-)
>>
>>
>> Zohar Stolar
>> Linnovate - Community Frameworks
>> zohar at linnovate.net
>> http://www.linnovate.net
>> Tel. +972-77-5345-704
>> Cel. +972-52-8348-278
>> Fax. +972-72-2500-882
>> SkypeID: zstolar
>> LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/drupal
>>
>>
>>
>> Christopher M. Jones wrote:
>>
>>> I'm looking for a decent approach to staging a drupal site. The 
>>> production site will be a collaborative authoring project, with 
>>> forums, blogs, and lots of media. The client will have access to 
>>> this site, and will be maintaining some of the content. Other 
>>> content will be maintained by us.
>>>
>>> The development company that hosts this project prefers to make all 
>>> of their changes, both to content and templates, in a testing 
>>> environment. Once their client has approved the changes, they like 
>>> to 'push' them to production.
>>>
>>> However, while these changes are taking place, the client may be 
>>> administering forums and writing blog posts in the -production- 
>>> version.
>>>
>>> To further complicate things, my company wants a three-stage cycle. 
>>> They want a dev site, where they make changes for in-house review, 
>>> which they then push to testing for client review before everything 
>>> is pushed to production.
>>>
>>> I'm unsure how to approach this. The site in question has always 
>>> been static html created in Dreamweaver. At some point they started 
>>> adding other things, so now there are two wordpress blogs, and two 
>>> phpbb forums. The forums and blogs presently are excepted from the 
>>> development cycle. They simply appear to be part of the site, 
>>> because their templates have been designed so. But that means that 
>>> we've got to propagate template changes across five templates. 
>>> Things are breaking constantly, and this is why I piped up to them 
>>> about drupal.
>>>
>>> I've seen a lot of discussion about this topic, but I really need 
>>> some hard answers. What should I do?
>>>
>>> I've seen the Staging module for 6.x. Is it safe to use? If so, then 
>>> we could use that for the database. Templates could be pushed with 
>>> rsync or svn... whatever. But would this work two ways? Could we 
>>> sync the dev / testing sites to the production site, then sync the 
>>> other way? Would we need to?
>>>
>>> Also, I envision using a multisite environment so that all sites 
>>> share the same modules, media, etc, but use different templates.
>>>
>>> I desperately need the detailed advice of someone with experience, 
>>> here.
>>>   
>

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