What is the best way to stage website development?

Submitted by Signal on Tue, 2010-03-02 17:11

Sorry for the newbie question.

I've been working on a website for our company for a couple of months now from the hosted server, but have not set up the domain name yet, so the only way to find the site is via the IP address.

But in the final stages, I need to have the domain name set up to test some of the features (SSL, Google analytics, etc...).

Can someone recommend the best way to handle staging my website? If I place the site in a sub-domain (beta.mydomain.com), will that allow me to test out the features above while still hiding the site from prying eyes? If I approach it this way, do I still need to migrate my site from the sub-domain to the main domain when I want to go live?

Or is there another way, an easier way?

Thank you.

Groups:

Newspapers on Drupal · LA Drupal (Los Angeles Drupal)

I suggest protecting your

nicholas.alipaz - Tue, 2010-03-02 17:23

I suggest protecting your site via the htaccess file. If you want you could even use the module http://drupal.org/project/webserver_auth . Essentially, anyone attempting to access the dev site would be prompted for a pass before being able to access it.

The following article should explain it fairly well:
http://www.elated.com/articles/password-protecting-your-pages-with-htacc...

Los Angeles web design for Drupal

we are always developing on

segments - Tue, 2010-03-02 19:14

we are always developing on dev.domainname.com and then we transfer the whole site; DB + Files to the main domain. You just should be careful and avoid using absolute paths hacked into modules, blocks, content and what ever referring to dev.domainname.com by using

<?php

global $base_url;
print $base_url . $base_path;

?>

-----

Drupal Webdesign by Propeople

If you use a

dishui - Tue, 2010-03-02 21:07

If you use a dev.somedomain.com for SSL testing, you can get a 30 day free SSL from GeoTrust

Thanks for the feedback

Signal - Tue, 2010-03-02 22:05

If I go the dev.mydomain.com route, do I basically need to move the site to the main domain like I would any other server move (database + files)?

A presentation by Ken Rickard

Itangalo - Sat, 2010-03-06 09:46

Ken Rickard held a presentation about Migration, Deployment and Staging on Drupal at DrupalCamp Stockholm fall 2009. It an intense presentation, but really worth listening to:

http://fall2009.drupalcamp.se/session/migration-deployment-and-staging-d...

Cheers,
//Johan Falk, Sweden

Want to make Drupal better? Answer a question or two in the forum.

Before a domain name is

greta_drupal - Mon, 2010-06-21 02:04

Before a domain name is pointed to a site, I typically create and utilize a subdomain on any other hosted domain to develop. Then, when ready to go live, create your new hosting account and move all of the files and database, then point the domain. Just be sure to modify the settings.php file, of course, for the live site.

Then, when your domain is live, create a subdomain from that (e.g., testing.mysite.com or dev.mysite.com or whatever), and COPY all of your live site files and database to that so that you have a permanent development site. Be sure to change the settings.php file of the testing site with respect to database used and base URL. Then, double check it!

The Backup & Migrate module makes sync'ing the two easy, when you need to do that.

http://TymeForChange.org

cPanel and virtual servers

jjmackow - Mon, 2010-06-21 02:54

I'm surprised there isn't a topic here in regards to directory structure. I normally put 100% of my modules into \sites\all\modules; and put my live production site into \sites\all\themes; and make use of the \sites\default\settings.php file to point to the production database.

But I typically use cPanel since most of my domains are on virtual servers. Within cPanel, I create a subdomain called dev, and then create a folder called \sites\dev.somedomain.com\themes and put a settings file into \sites\dev.somedomain.com\settings.php , and point it to a separate database for development.

This lets me still use the \sites\dev....\themes\ directory for doing my theme development. Since all of the modules are in the \all\ directory, I'm assured that they will all be at the same version for both my prod site as well as my dev and staging sites (i haven't mentioned a dif between dev and staging, but you can make a separate directory called staging.somedomain.com with the same directory structure beneath it.

There's a webinar about

christefano - Thu, 2010-10-28 11:07

There's a webinar about staging and deployment from Acquia tomorrow.

Exaltation of Larks Founder, CEO http://www.larks.la	LA Drupal Organizer, Drupal Adventure Guide http://ladrupal.org/christo	Droplabs Founder, Lead Burrito Analyst http://droplabs.net

Thanks cristefano that

sciaq - Tue, 2010-11-16 05:45

Thanks cristefano that webinar was really helpful, luckily they had a saved copy on there website as I missed it. Just wondering Signal, did you end up finding how to stager your website as I am currently working on that for my website but it seems to be stalling and taking some time.

Please let me know,

Dan