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Jackson Murphy
Member
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10th March 2011 (1 year ago)
What is the best solution to build a Wordpress website on a development server, so when the site is ready we can easily move the site to the Live server?
Would we have to reinstall/configure Wordpress, Plugins, move DB tables/content, images, etc...?
Is it better to develop on the server that the live site will be on? Like in a folder off the root... domain.com/wordpress
How do you handle this type of situation? Any advice is more appreciated! Thanks!
What is the best solution to build a Wordpress website on a development server, so when the site is ready we can easily move the site to the Live server?
Would we have to reinstall/configure Wordpress, Plugins, move DB tables/content, images, etc...?
Is it better to develop on the server that the live site will be on? Like in a folder off the root... domain.com/wordpress
How do you handle this type of situation? Any advice is more appreciated! Thanks!
@jackson - I usually set the hosts file on my development computer (laptop) so that the domain name the site is going to use actually points to my test server - then i can set it up as though i am actually working on the real domain, but not touch that.
Then when i'm ready to go I can either back everything up and move it to the live server, or switch the live domains ip address to my dev server (and remove the entry from the hosts file so i'm looking at the real sit again).
There are a lot of ways you can go about this, you could develop in a subfolder and manually change the paths in the database when you are ready to go live and pop the site into the root folder. You can develop on a different location entirely and do the same thing as well... the main thing you keep in mind with this is that you have to locate and replace all the references to the location of the site.. so if you are developing it at blahblah.com/dev/customerssite/ you will want to search for and replace every instance of that.. it would be something like home/accountname/public_html/dev/customersite etc.
or there is a plugin available that handles this automatically as well, I haven't tried it personally but have heard from other that its very handy. http://pluginbuddy.com/purchase/backupbuddy/
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Sales & Support Lead
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18th March 2011 (1 year ago)
#
Are you wanting to setup a development server on the same area of a shared server as a live site?
I'd recommend against that. If you're just developing a single WordPress site, you could setup a subdirectory on your site for wordpress and do some development there.
WordPress Multi-site really works best at the root of your domain though - so that's really the best option. As Barry mentioned, testing locally and/or editing your local hosts file is the easiest way to go about it.
I'm very interested in this topic as well. Initial deployment actually seems relatively straightforward compared to the task of maintaining the site afterwards. If I want to fix bugs and develop new plugins, themes, etc. once the site is launched, how do I test things on my dev server and then update the live server with just the components I'm interested in? I'm using Multisite.
What is the best testing environment setup for a multisite installation with other Premium themes installed? What does one need to test for when a new version of WordPress comes out and I want to upgrade the whole system? How do I insure that my paying customers' sites won't break?
Responses (8)
Developer — 11th March 2011 (1 year ago) #
@jackson - I usually set the hosts file on my development computer (laptop) so that the domain name the site is going to use actually points to my test server - then i can set it up as though i am actually working on the real domain, but not touch that.
Then when i'm ready to go I can either back everything up and move it to the live server, or switch the live domains ip address to my dev server (and remove the entry from the hosts file so i'm looking at the real sit again).
Member — 11th March 2011 (1 year ago) #
There are a lot of ways you can go about this, you could develop in a subfolder and manually change the paths in the database when you are ready to go live and pop the site into the root folder. You can develop on a different location entirely and do the same thing as well... the main thing you keep in mind with this is that you have to locate and replace all the references to the location of the site.. so if you are developing it at blahblah.com/dev/customerssite/ you will want to search for and replace every instance of that.. it would be something like home/accountname/public_html/dev/customersite etc.
or there is a plugin available that handles this automatically as well, I haven't tried it personally but have heard from other that its very handy. http://pluginbuddy.com/purchase/backupbuddy/
Member — 11th March 2011 (1 year ago) #
Thank you for your responses. I need to figure out if I can set up a development server on a shared hosting account...
Sales & Support Lead — 18th March 2011 (1 year ago) #
Are you wanting to setup a development server on the same area of a shared server as a live site?
I'd recommend against that. If you're just developing a single WordPress site, you could setup a subdirectory on your site for wordpress and do some development there.
WordPress Multi-site really works best at the root of your domain though - so that's really the best option. As Barry mentioned, testing locally and/or editing your local hosts file is the easiest way to go about it.
Hope this helps. Thanks!
Member — 18th March 2011 (1 year ago) #
I'm very interested in this topic as well. Initial deployment actually seems relatively straightforward compared to the task of maintaining the site afterwards. If I want to fix bugs and develop new plugins, themes, etc. once the site is launched, how do I test things on my dev server and then update the live server with just the components I'm interested in? I'm using Multisite.
Member — 20th March 2011 (1 year ago) #
What is the best testing environment setup for a multisite installation with other Premium themes installed? What does one need to test for when a new version of WordPress comes out and I want to upgrade the whole system? How do I insure that my paying customers' sites won't break?
Lead Developer — 21st March 2011 (1 year ago) #
The best way I think is to maintain a local test server that is an exact copy and use the hosts file trick.
Member — 18th February 2012 (3 months ago) #
Aaron, could you list the folders that need to be in the local host for this to work? Is it just wp-admin, wp-content, and wp-includes? Or more?
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