Can you help me to understand, how do I do Drupal website deployment and development?
Suppose, I developed 1.0 version of Berty&Frank website. I copied everything to their production server and it is alive and kicking now. Site is already full of contents and is growing.
I am asked to add additional features to the website. I am now experimenting with the way how I can implement them in a dev version. I am creating/deleting content types, fill created nodes with demo data just to see how they look like etc. Now I found the way and I want to upgrade production website to the same structure as my dev version now. How do I do that?
Is the only way to manually make every change I made in dev version?
I would explore the Aegir project for the future management of your website. It allows you to clone a site, then to upgrade the site to a new "platform" which could be the next release of Drupal or another Drupal system (such as OpenAtrium).
More can be found at the aegir wiki.
You can export/import views and contenttypes, but a lot of settings etc is stored in the db. This gives two options
Either to use something like backup & migrate to import your settings from dev. This wont work if you have test data though, as you would overwrite the db.
The other options is to repeat what you did on the live site.
A third options could be to take a fresh dump of the live site, do all the settings in that db in dev environment and overwrite the live db with that. You could loose some comments etc, but shouldn't be a big deal.
I use Subversion, and just do an update on my production server when I am satisfied with the code on my development server (actually, I have a staging server that is a duplicate of the production machine, so I update that before the production; I can see any bugs that might pop up).
For database changes, I haven't found anything better than just keeping track of my changes (usually adding/modifying CCK fields) and performing the same changes to the production database. I also download my production database regularly, so that dev and staging have almost the same content. That helps to minimize the confusion.
read http://www.drupal.org/upgrade/
Related
I have a simple Wordpress website that is created using twelve twenty. I need to transfer it from server to my PC to be able to edit it and transfer it back to server. Now that I copied wordpress directory from server to my PC it asks me to reinstall it. How can I do it? Am I missing something? Is it possible to work on website locally and once it is done transger it to the server?
Reason for doing this are:
-don't want to loss data for wrong doing things.
-have a copy of website on local machine.
-easier to work on the local machine offline rather than bing online and accssing the server.
From my point of view , i would suggest u to back-up full website and database from server [every hosting control panels has option to backup same]
Connect via ftp and edit ur files.. there to make lots of changes when u want to move from local to server or server to local.
cheers!!!
Editing the files on a live site directly is a terrible, terrible idea. It invites any number of points of failure. If you're actively developing a site things will break at some point - it's part of the developing process - and you definitely want to break things locally, not on a live site.
There's actually several steps involved, all of which are too long to go into great detail, but here's an overview of what is required along with a few links to get you started. The first time you do it seems laborious, but once you figure it all out it actually only takes 10 minutes.
Firstly you will need a local environment MySQL and PHP environment to install it. As you're on PC look at WAMP; here's a fairly good tutorial on installing it.
If you have a lot of content on the live site you might want to import it into your local environment; you'll need to export the database (probably using PHPMyAdmin) and then import it into your local database. You will need to update a couple of database options so that it points towards your localhost. It's basically the reverse of the process detailed here: you'll be changing your-site.com to localhost:8888. If your site is relatively simple you could skip this stage*
Now you should be able to update your local copy of wp-config.php with the database connect details for your local database (usually it's just localhost for the host name and root for the user and password`). With that in place you should now be able to install WP.
Now that it's installed you can edit away to your heart's content on your local copy, safe in the knowledge that anything you do on your local copy doesn't affect your live copy. When you're ready to push your changes live you can use FTP to copy your local files to your live environment.
* For a lot of projects I don't actually go to the trouble of synching databases - if there's a live site that the client can change the content on it often becomes a futile exercise attempting to synch a database with a moving target. In those instances I'll just use a comprehensive set of test content that contains every conceivable type of content that could possible inserted in to the live site.
your going to love working on your project from your locally. Here's an article I found on wpmudev http://premium.wpmudev.org/blog/how-to-install-wordpress-locally-for-pcwindows-with-xampp/ which gives you a step by step guide for PC / Windows.
I'm not a WordPress developer, but I'm trying to determine the optimal way for a team of folks to work with WordPress. For a Rails project or most anything else, it's easy to work locally and deploy upstream, but my understanding is that WordPress doesn't make this quite as easy. Maybe this is a myth?
From what I gather, it's not uncommon for URLs and file paths to be stored in the database which seems like it would make it difficult to deploy a WP project from dev --> stg --> prd (where each environment has it's own URL and possibly different file paths), much less for individual developers to have their own dev environment that would need to be "merged" into a unified copy for deployment.
I could configure all developer sandboxes to use a single database, but here again, if URLs and file paths are stored then nothing is gained.
There are a series of smaller questions here, but the more I think about those, the more I realize that what I'm really asking for is advice about how to structure things for optimal development of a WordPress site that will be hacked on by a team of developers. I'd prefer the sandboxed approach we use for other projects, but I have no idea if/how things can be unified once all development is complete.
Warning: incoming wall of text..
#Rob, WP is hell when it comes to working in teams; however, with a little work (and some symlink magic) you can set up your WP projects so that your working files for your themes or plugins can reside separately from the WP core. Some of this uses WP's built in mechanisms, some of it is related to SVN externals (hint). I'll let you google that since it's outside the scope of your question.
A note on WP GUIDs
WARNING: DO NOT replace guids. WP GUIDs are there for external feed readers. Feed readers use the GUID to determine if the content is recent. Changing it basically tells those readers that every entry in the feed is new (especially for posts.) That introduces a lot of extra overhead for legacy content that you just don't need. GUID are a legacy feature that should have been changed a long time ago to UUIDs. Technically, you can use anything int he guid field, but WP uses the permalink to populate that field -- legacy.
The only time it is ever acceptable to change the GUID is for new wp projects where content is brand-spankin' new.
To answer your question:
WP stores explicit references to the current domain in a dozen places in it's DB. These locations are a pain to track down and change, and the last thing you want to do is deal with manual edits to a *.sql dump file that you're going to import into production. It just smacks of bad development practices.
There's a couple ways to get around this, but it means a little bit of work if you're already further down your development lifecycle. I'll address the first case.
Case 1: Project Onset
When you're starting the project, you'll likely have a development sandbox and DB ready. You'll likely have WP already installed by now, so it's essentially clean for all intents and purposes.
The first thing you're going to want to do is change how your config file works. Most folks keep with the standard wp-config.php file (beyond a team production project, there's not really any reason to edit it.) However, you can set it up with some logic to include developer-specific or environment-specific config files. For example:
wp-config.php
switch( $current_environment )
{
case 'jack.local' : include( 'wp-config-jack.php' ) break; // Jack's sandbox
case 'jill.local' : include( 'wp-config-jill.php' ) break; // Jill's sandbox
default : ... break; // Staging & Production
}
The next thing you're going to want to do is include the normal contents of the wp-config.php file in a wp-config-remote.php file for use on staging/production. Next, edit your wp-config-remote.php file so that you can use 1 config file across multiple environments (staging,production). An if(...) or switch(...) block is all you need, e.g.
if( (strpos( $_SERVER[ "HTTP_HOST" ], "localhost" ) !== false) || (strpos( $_SERVER[ "HTTP_HOST" ], "local" ) !== false) )
(There are better ways to write that condition... this is just a crude example.)
Configure all of your WP settings specific to each of your remote environments. Hopefully you'll be checking this into a source control repository.
That basically frees you up to let your team have config settings specific to their environment, while letting you check in settings for each of the remote environments once.
The second thing you're going to want to do is build a mechanism to intercept and filter domain-specific links. The intent behind this mechanism is to replace any references to the current domain with a token/placeholder. I've outline the technique to do this here: http://www.farfromfearless.com/2010/09/07/url-token-replacement-techniques-for-wordpress-3-0/
It basically amounts to creating a filter that acts on the content before it's submitted to the DB and before the content is rendered to the page. The technique is transparent in that it won't affect normal editing practices. You can still create your content in the editor, reference other pages, posts, images, etc. and they'll show up just fine while editing in different environments.
In recent projects, I've wrapped all of this and a few other WP "normalization" features into a single bootstrap plugin that I set & forget.
Case 2: Project Ongoing
Now, in your case, you're further along in your development lifecycle. It's going to take some work to replace those domain references, but if you follow the steps I've outline above you should only ever have to do this once. The link I supplied above gives you the SQL you'll need to do that job. It's important to note that in a multi-site environment, you'll need to do this for every "sub-site" you've created.
Once you've updated your DB, I suggest implementing the steps in CASE 1 so you don't have to repeat the steps again.
Bonus: synchronizing content
Synchronizing content is a pain. What I've done in recent projects is had clients work on the staging server and promote changes upstream to production. So then, that leaves you with synchronizing downstream to your sandbox(es). Write a shell script that dumps a copy of SPECIFIC content tables from your staging DB, and imports them into your sandbox DB (effectively replacing content tables.) You should be able to see the benefit of the domain-token-replacement technique.
Images that aren't checked into source control, e.g. client images should be pushed to a common location, e.g. an S3 Bucket. There are WP plugins that can help you with that. That'll save a lot of time having to synchronize assets across environments.
I hope this helps you out -- if not, there's always SilverStripe ;)
It easy we build on a dev server and move to live server with this sql query:
UPDATE wp_posts SET guid = REPLACE(guid, 'devserver.com', 'liveserver.com');
UPDATE wp_posts SET post_content = REPLACE(post_content, 'devserver.com', 'liveserver.com');
UPDATE wp_options SET option_value = REPLACE(option_value, 'devserver.com', 'liveserver.com');
Last year I wrote a bash script to mirror a live MU installation into a sandbox. It's not perfect and not ideal, but a good starting point. It consists of mirroring the databases, files and rewriting the mirrored database to reflect the sandbox.
See http://pp19dd.com/2011/01/bash-script-to-mirror-wordpress-mu-installation-into-a-sandbox/
It's important for developers to be able to take live and exact content snapshots to replicate conditions.
I just ran into this issue myself launching a new website. My solution was to use Vagrant. Vagrant is also platform agnostic so you could be developing on a Mac and a teammate is using Windows. Same Vagrant project runs on both.
I wrote a guide on how to set Vagrant up with Wordpress from a production environment running locally on your machine. I don't use Wordpress that often but every time I do its always a hassle to setup Apache and PHP on my Mac, then make sure all the Wordpress site urls are updated in the database.
Once you've configured your Vagrant project, its a single command for any developer on your team to be up and running with a local instance of Wordpress. In short, Vagrant will mount your project directory from your host machine in the guest machine and run Apache, MySQL, PHP through the guest machine. You still use your host machine's IDE (as you normally would) and your host machines browser. There is no uploading of files anywhere, its just code, save, refresh browser all on your local machine.
http://www.distilnetworks.com/wordpress-development-with-vagrant/ <- Explains how to set it all up with Vagrant
https://gist.github.com/markmalek/fd2e6e65385400d9cd47 <- the shell script when provisioning Vagrant
The shell script could probably be a lot better, this is what worked for me but I would love to hear some better suggestions or ideas. I'm new to Vagrant and now use it for some of our other projects so thought it would be a good fit here as well.
I do update the GUID in the shell script, which I've read in another answer that you shouldn't do because feed readers use this. In this case its irrelevant since its just for your local instance of Wordpress but I wouldn't make this change in production. See this answer for better explanation.
Not a big deal, simply backup you whole site with all in one wp migration plugin and import on live server installation, plugin will replace all url automatically.
I've installed a wordpress blog on my development environment. The URL for this environment is dev.mysite.com and my live environment is located at mysite.com. They both share the same database. There's an SVN that works on both environments.
I've installed the wordpress blog on my development environment and everything is fine, but when I moved to the real environment it does not open.
SELECT * FROM wp_optionsLIMIT 1000
The query above shows, that the siteurl is dev.mysite.com. I can change it, but then it will stop working on the development environment (right?). Is there any way to be able to access the blog from both environments, while sharing the same database?
In short I think the answer is no.
Wordpress stores the site/base URL in a few rows in that wp_options table, so it will only work properly for one URL. Is there a reason you need to point them both to the same DB?
When I'm working on Wordpress I just work on the one dev environment and then update my live site incrementally. I thought that was the reason you would have separate environments!
It is a VERY BAD IDEA to use same DB for both development and production, because you can accidently break it (always have backups!). You should have separate DBs, and the one for production should only be used by production app.
You better use some build tools to update production automatically if you need it often, or at least do it manually. Consider using Phing or another build tools.
I'm accustomed to writing desktop applications in C#.NET. Where I have a nice little solution folder which is also under version control. So at any time, on any computer I can check out whatever version of my software I want run the compiler and have a working copy of my program.
Now I'm looking into developing websites, where the files and data are a lot more dispersed. I'm using ASP.NET, but really my question is more general and could apply to any website framework.
I'm trying to understand the proper work-flow between developing my website, a version control server, and the actual live website that users will see. Obviously this can vary a lot depending on the type and scale of the website, but I'm only considering a pretty simple site. I'm just getting started with this stuff.
The diagram below shows my current idea. All the source files for the site would be stored on a subversion server, which I would check out onto my local computer. My local computer would have a local database which I would use for development of the site. Next I would publish to a test version on my hosted server, which would point to a separate test database. This test database may periodically be replaced by a copy of the live database.
If all goes well I would then publish to a beta version of the site which points to the live data. Users could then check out the beta version to provide feedback. Finally if there are still no problems the source files for the live site would be updated.
Does this make sense? Does anyone have any comments on how this could be improved? Are there any good books or online tutorials available on developing these kind of workflows?
Also the one thing that I'm really not sure about is how to manage changes to the actual schema of the database. I figure with each version I could generate a SQL script that can be use to update the Test and Live databases on the host. However, I'd also like to be able to easily setup a new database for any version of my site with out having to run every update SQL script for every version up to the desired version. Is the best solution to use an ORM like NHibernate or Subsonic so I could always generate my database schema directly from my code?
I currently use a workflow very similar to this. It's not flawless, but for the most part it works well. It sounds like you pretty much have the important parts figured out.
Where I work we have a powerful web server. Our subversion repos also live on this server. For myself, as a LAMP developer, I do all of my development on my local Linux machine (or VM) with a local MySQL database, operating on a local working copy.
At all times I maintain two primary branches of the application: A Dev branch (trunk) and a Live branch (which reflects the current production version). My repo looks like this:
/repo/trunk/ [My current active development version]
/repo/archive/ [All other versions not in active development live here]
/repo/archive/2010.12/ [This happens to be the current production version]
On the web server we maintain three separate instances of the software: Live (or Production), Beta, and Dev. The following should illustrate how we use these versions to
Dev - Always points to our development version at `/repo/trunk'. Uses a non-vesioned config file to point to the development database. Development is never physically done here however; instead we work on our local machines, where our working copies point to the Trunk, and do all our development testing on our local machines. After several commits from multiple developers, though, it's important to test on the Dev server to make sure we're on the right track and no one is breaking someone else's changes.
Live - Always points to the most recent stable production version. In this case, it points to /repo/archive/2010.12/. This version is world-accessible.
Beta - Most of the time, Beta will be a mirror of whats on Live and points to the same production version in our repository (/repo/archive/2010.12). Anytime we need bug fixes on Live, we make them here, test them, and then commit & update live. (We also merge them into Trunk, if necessary.)
When the version in Trunk is deemed complete and ready for testing, I create a new archive branch in the repository for the upcoming new release (i.e. 2011.01) by svn copying the existing production branch. Then I merge the Trunk version into the new branch and commit, so we have a version that mirrors whats currently on Dev. Of course now active development for the next release can continue on Dev, while we Beta test this new Archived version on Beta. When beta testing is complete, we commit any fixes and switch Live to the new version (/repo/archive/2011.01).
Now, you've probably figured out that the database merging is a bit trickier. We use MySQL and, to my knowledge, there's no suitable versioning system for MySQL. So with each migration (VM to Dev, Dev to Beta, Beta to Live) I'll first make a backup of the current database, then make the necessary changes. Personally I use a commercial version of SQLYog which allows me to synchronize the database schema (super handy).
I have been developing a Drupal 6 site on my PC using XAMPP. I'm done now, and everything looks peachy.
Problem is, I need to put all my content (including custom modules and themes) up onto a staging server which only has a fresh Drupal 6 install on it. I can't imagine having to set up all my custom content types and whatnot all over again on the staging server.
So I ask, how does one go about doing what I need to do? Which is essentially duplicating my Drupal install from my PC, to the staging server.
The staging server is running Linux, and I develop on a Windows PC, if that helps.
Thanks in advance.
Copy up all the files from development to live, and mysqldump your database and run that on the live server. Then all you have to do is change the settings.php file to point at the right database, if for some reason 'localhost' is not also your mysql database.
The quickest solution is probably the backup_migrate module. It is only a tool to copy your database. You could also use phpmyadmin or similar instead if you wanted. The backup_migrate module do have some good defaults settings as to which tables to skip (like cache tables). All the settings etc. that is not defined in code is stored in your db. So you only need to copy the db to be set. You can choose to exclude some tables, like the node or user table if you don't want to bring over your test data.
If you don't use subversion, then you gotta manually copy the files (rsync, scp, whatever) and the db (mysqldump).
what we usually do is have a hierarchy of independent subversion repos as follows:
core
sites/all/modules/contributed
sites/all/modules/custom
sites/all/themes/ (we develop our own and don't use contributed themes)
sites/all/libraries
then we use the svn:externals properties so that if you check out "core" you get every associated repo.
we got about 2 main developers with 4 other guys that may also contribute code to the site. each have their own local dev environment and we all got a common sandbox - where we make sure the stuff we wrote doesn't break someone else's module (it has happened before!).
we use svn commit hooks to update the beta/staging/sandbox site upon commit.
with all that setup, [re]deploying a site is a simple matter of going to the proper folder and issuing a "svn co http://repolocation/reponame ." and then updating the DB.
two last things to consider:
we are moving from svn to git
the features module will allow you to save changes you make to your own modules (views, content types, etc) and package all that into a deployable module so you don't have to duplicate your efforts. we are also looking into using this for ourselves.
I hope this helps you.
I second using backup_migrate. It's great.
When I'm installing a fresh site from development to production, I:
backup the site using backup_migrate module
copy all the files up to the server
edit the sites/default/settings.php to have the right database path and account info
do an import of the last backup_migrate dump (usually using mysql < backupfilename.sql, unless I already have drupal setup and have backup_migrate installed, then I use the GUI
But take a look here for the official version:
http://drupal.org/node/776864
Now, you didn't ask, but when the site is live and users are contributing content, moving future development versions of your site from development/staging to production without blowing away live content is a whole different problem, and one that Drupal doesn't have a good answer for...
Andy-