[support] Strategy for converting a site to drupal

[Metzler, David]

Some of the language you are using doesn't quite translate to the world of a CMS. You need to start thinking in separate terms of "content" vs. "code". These things are handled very differently and are not staged and deployed in the same way. 

It's a bit over-simplistic but generally, code is generally created in dev environments and pushed to staging/production servers after testing. 

Content is created in production and pulled back to dev environments to feed testing of code. 

Up until the point that you are working with multiple people in a production CMS environment, you can push complete databases from dev to staging/production enviornments. 

For this, you want to look at the backup_migrate module at http://drupal.org/project/backup_migrate which can be used to pull down copies of complete drupal databases, or push databse to production. 

The "code" is transferred just like old static files to production. 

Also, if you're not afraid of SSH and command line tools, drush (the drupal shell)  is a must have: http://drupal.org/project/drush . 

Dave


-----Original Message-----
From: support-bounces at drupal.org [mailto:support-bounces at drupal.org] On Behalf Of Tim Johnson
Sent: Wednesday, November 21, 2012 4:11 PM
To: 'support at drupal.org'
Subject: Re: [support] Strategy for converting a site to drupal

* Metzler, David <metzlerd at evergreen.edu> [121121 15:00]:
> I'm sure that there are many different ways that this is done in
> the drupal community as much depends on your hosting environment.
> Many of us do that development work on our laptops and then push
> them to a testing site for external use.  I would certainly
> recommend that approach. 

  My preferred method is maintain an internal test site - I.E. on my
  local network workstation and upload changes as they are
  finalized.

  My projects are configured so that each has a utility that maps
  all dependencies of files composing that project so that when I
  upload any one file, any dependencies are also uploaded. (sort of
  a "makefile" for FTP).

  Is there a drupal module that would would enable something like that?
    
  To illustrate, let's say I have an internal test site at
  http://localhost/timslocal and I upload tested changes (with
  dependencies also) to http://www.tj49.com/timsremote

> Anyway, welcome to the drupal community.  Good luck with the site migration. 
 :) Thank you

-- 
Tim 
tim at tee jay forty nine dot com or akwebsoft dot com
http://www.akwebsoft.com
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