Hey folks, I got a project from a firm program out a Wordpress design. 80% into it I learn that the client already have an existing one, a robust one, with subsrciptions, blogs, forums, newsletter mailers and so on. Turns out there is a discrepancy bettweent design and old wp structure which I will work on resolving.
I have been developing in on my own server for the time being.
At this point I am not clear on what the strategy should be.
1.) Export out the current wp site out to a different server, duplicate it and then reskin/rework the frame work.
2.) The firms hope was that I would be able to go in and add a new theme, but am not convinced that doing this live will be a good idea since I am using a different theme so all the hooks will be different then the current one.
3.) There is already a large amount of users etc that have signed up to the existing newletter, forum etc. Not sure how to carry this forward?
Any insights are greatly appreciated.
Definitely make a copy of the existing environment. Check it into a version control system (if it's not already the case) and work on that.
Try to put all your work into a new theme: That will make installing the changes on the production server super-easy.
Be careful about any notifications and pings that your development copy may send to the outside world. Be especially careful about the newsletter.
Related
I am writing to see if anyone has any tips on how one might be able to duplicate a Wordpress site.
We have branded and designed a research study site, and would like to copy this site entirely and rebrand it for a different study.
Does anyone know what might need to go into this to do so? Having trouble figuring this out!
Best,
Taylor
I guess it depends on what you mean by "rebrand". To just duplicate the site should be a relatively easy job to do. You will have to download everything from you public_html and also get a backup of your database. Then upload the files from public_html to a new hosting and also import the database.
After that part now arise some more things. First of the domain name. You will need to change the domain name to reflect a new one you want to use -- i will not get into details about that since you can find lots of good tutorials on how to do that with simple googling. If you need to change any pictures/logos and anything else since you designed it you should know what to change.
Then if there are remaining parts that need to be changed, for example there are many cases in texts fields where the brand of the previous research site is mentioned then I can suggest using a tool like wp-cli which is the only tool currently that comes to my mind for such a cache. It is a really useful and powerful tool but it requires you to have access to ssh to the hosting.
If i come up with something else as well, I will update this.
I want to set up a system where a developer can work on a separate server on a wordpress website.
My question is: If in the meantime changes are made to the live site (like plugin updates, new plugins, new posts, new comments, etc), how is one able to import a new feature (e.g. a new page) from the development server on the live site while making sure that previous changes on the live site don't get deleted?
I am looking to understand how this all works. In a sense, I would like to have some kind of version control system.
Thanks in advance :)
You can version control your own code using git. Basically we would init a new git repo and commit changes onto this repository. This can lie separately outside of the core files. i.e you only need to include the wp-content directory and ignore all the other core wordpress files.
Here is a good article on how to do a really good versioning system for a website.
http://toroid.org/git-website-howto
The posts and pages (basically content) in a wordpress site however lies in the database.Any changes made there will be permanent.
The only option is to keep taking regular backups of the content. You can do this by using an automated backup tool.
If you really want to version control your database, here is an article that helps:
https://blog.codinghorror.com/get-your-database-under-version-control/
This one is a tricky one. You cant host a single website on two servers. Just imagine a website having 2 hosted urls..!! No way.. You can never do that.
You better create a new user and give access to him. Look carefully in the settings and be a admin. You will have a chance to approve or reject what the second user changes.
Hope this helps.
This is my first time migrating a website from Joomla to Wordpress. The website: www.sfspas.com
1- I am worried that the website will not transfer well or that I will loose functionalities.
Can I duplicate the code and just transfer that version to Wordpress? (Keeping the website live via Joomla and creating in parallel a new website www.sfpsas222.com in wordpress to test things out?)
The website has to be live 24h/7 and It can't just break. How can I make sure the inventory will be uploaded correctly and the website will look as it looks now?
2- Once transferred. If I want to change the appearance of the index.php can I simply upload a newly designed index page on Wordpress? How can I go about it? Any suggestions will be highly appreciated!
Thanks!
I recently transferred one of my sites from Joomla to Wordpress and I can say, that it's not just one-click action. Both frameworks have their own structure, you can't transfer content and users directly.
In short, for transfer you need to create a simple plugin which will take all require info from Joomla (articles, users, etc.) and inject it into Wordpress database, converting prior to that, if necessary.
And no, you CAN NOT do this on 24/7 running site. Don't even think about it. Duplicate your site, convert its database to WordPress, check, that everything works properly, and only then put it online.
It's not an easy process and it requires some knowledge. Even if some kind of Joomla-Wordpress converter exists, you'll have a lot of things messed 100% guaranteed. I've made a lot of transfers in my life, so I'm pretty sure of it.
Providing you have a required knowledge of database management and PHP, just be patient and spend some time. If you don't - hire a professional. There's no easy way here, because Joomla and WordPress are like car and bike. Both are a transport, both run fast, but you can't convert one into another without any effort.
I'm not entirely sure how to properly ask this, so please bear with me.
I have an idea for a site I would like to build, which would basically be a site for members to create some data and have it housed in my database. I would like to offer a value-add to the site which would allow people to spin off their own website via my own "website builder" tool (probably some sort of CMS). Their website would be able to communicate with my master database to display their data.
Getting down to the crux of the topic, I'm looking for architectural advice/ideas/etc. regarding what services I could use to do this. I'm not looking a 100% automated solution, but something along these lines (which may not be completely correct, I admit):
Customer puts in an order to create their own site, using my tools.
I setup a separate domain for them, roll out the CMS foundation to the site, and the customer has full editing control of the CMS to design it however they would like.
The CMS would have some customizations so that it includes functionality to call APIs located on the master site, which would return the relevant data.
In the research I have done on SO, I've seen a lot of mentions of Umbraco which honestly looks like a good start. I'm just worried that when I go to upgrade a version, I have to deal with overwriting my custom API functionality. I'm guessing this is the nature of the beast, and requires me to accept/plan for it.
Does anyone have any thoughts about this? Some high-level starting points? Thanks!
I've been thinking about this same issue for my customers.
It is not hard to automatically roll out a stock cms such as Wordpress or Joomla. This sort of thing is done all the time by "1 click installers" that DreamHost and others have.
Including custom widgets or plugins for the CMS that can connect to your main app is also not hard.
For dns, you can use Amazon Route 53 or other DNS services that include a good api at the dns management level.
I suggest that you focus on using a CMS that is very popular (eg Wordpress or Joomla) rather than something less well known such as Umbraco. Using a more popular system will drastically reduce your training costs--remember that if you supply the CMS to your customers, then they'll also expect you to supply the support for it...
Not sure if this is the right place to ask, sorry if its not. I build a lot of Wordpress sites. My problem is, the number of them is getting big and harder to update them all when new releases come out.
I have written an app that will download the latest Wordpress release, and manually ftp the new files to all the clients, but this takes forever... need a new way.
I wanted to restructure this while I can or start a new process at least. Whats the best way to manage multiple Wordpress sites and keep them all updated? Some people have said 1 DB and modded config, others I have seen said to keep all installs separate and use plugins to automatically upgrade, but I don't know whats best to do. Ideas? Thanks :)
If these were all sites you managed on your own server, I'd recommend using a Multisite installation rather than separate instances of WordPress. This way you only have one set of themes, one set of plug-ins, and one copy of WordPress to maintain.
If these sites are on different servers (i.e. you're maintaining sites for clients remotely), I'd recommend you look in to a beta account with WP Remote. This is a service specifically built to allow you to remotely monitor and update multiple WordPress installations. It might be the best solution for you because it allows you to use the one-click update rather than manually downloading/FTP-ing the new files.
You can use this free self hosted app http://infinitewp.com
No limitation in number of sites being managed. You can update WP/plugin/themes, do backups, one click login to your WordPress admin panel.
EAMann is right, especially with the new Multi Site features in Wordpress 3.0, there is no better way to manage multiple sites under one umbrella. Being a developer myself, I know the pain of having to login to all those different accounts!
The way to set it up is create a "master domain name" that you will log into. Place this in your WP Config:
define('WP_ALLOW_MULTISITE', true);
Then login to your admin panel, navigate to TOOLS>Network.
After you've set everything up, copy/paste what it tells you to your HTAccess and WP Config file.
The next step, especially if you are putting clients on this network, is they will want their own domain name, not AIBot.com/theirname right? Thats where Domain Mapping comes in:
http://ottopress.com/2010/wordpress-3-0-multisite-domain-mapping-tutorial/
Check that out and good luck!
What you need is www.managewp.com it can do all of that for you plus a ton of other excellent features.