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Site Management

  • Site Management

    Posted 9 years 6 months ago
    • Hi all!

      I'm curious to know how people use testing environments and sand box(s) with Joomla.

      For example, today Joomla 3.3.4 came out, I'd love to upgrade to that, but NOT in production. So, I'm curious to know how do you manage your environment(s)?

      Do you keep a test site built off of your most recent back up? If so, how? Is it with akeeba backups? Is there something automated so I'm not downloading, configuring, and kickstarting all the darn time?

      Thanks!

      -John
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    Re: Site Management

    Posted 9 years 6 months ago
    • You can clone your site anywhere using akeeba backup and akeeba kickstart.

      You have three main choices as to where...

      1. do your testing locally (not ideal as server settings might not be the same)
      2. do you testing in a subfolder of you production site
      3. create a subdomain on you main domain

      My preference is to use 3 - but I do 1 and 2 also.

      Regards, Mark.
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  • Re: Site Management

    Posted 9 years 6 months ago
    • Mark - thanks for your reply. I'd lean towards 3 as it's closest to my live environment. However, I have two concerns/questions:

      1 any chance that google would see it as duplicate of your site? Maybe that's handled with a blocked agent in the .htaccess of the backup/testing site
      2 which is really about my lazyness - does this require that you manually take a backup then install and configure it before testing, or does akeeba offer some automation for "cloning" sites?

      Thanks!
      MrT wrote:
      You can clone your site anywhere using akeeba backup and akeeba kickstart.

      You have three main choices as to where...

      1. do your testing locally (not ideal as server settings might not be the same)
      2. do you testing in a subfolder of you production site
      3. create a subdomain on you main domain

      My preference is to use 3 - but I do 1 and 2 also.

      Regards, Mark.
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    Re: Site Management

    Posted 9 years 6 months ago
    • 1. no it shouldn't because it's a different sub-domain - but just change global config in the close to "noindex, nofollow" to be sure.
      2. well all my site backups are on cron jobs anyway for akeeba - and I put them on my Amazon S3 account. So all I need to do to create a test site is upload kickstart - run it and select the appropriate backup off my s3 account - job done.

      Regards, Mark.
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  • Re: Site Management

    Posted 9 years 6 months ago
    • Anyone else have another approach to managing a test/sandbox version of your site?

      A new approach to promotion of a preversion of your site to the live version?
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    Re: Site Management

    Posted 9 years 6 months ago
    • Hi there,

      I guess a lot depends on your experience and how much work you want to put into it.

      I use the same approach as MrT (Mark), that is run a fresh backup and use kickstart to create on server. If you have tons of server space then you could probably build some cron jobs to run a site restore on a daily/weekly basis so that your clone is always up to date.

      Personally I see anything else as a risk. Using Akeeba I can straight away if the site is working as expected before I do the updates etc.

      Of course there is yet another alternative (if money is not an issue) and that is to have your live site mirrored to another hosting account and then do updates on the mirror. If all works as expected then swap the new version to old server.

      There are many ways to achieve these things but realistically I believe Mark's suggestions are best for most people.

      Hope this helps 8)

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  • Re: Site Management

    Posted 9 years 6 months ago
    • I am on Windows so I use Xampp for testing locally.

      I ALWAYS have an Akeeba backup for each site stored on AND offline. Only takes one time when you need it, and that's always an emergency
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    Re: Site Management

    Posted 9 years 5 months ago
    • I am a little different

      I have a linux box at home (and a fibre optic 100meg down 50 meg up speed sure helps)
      I use the very simple Linux Centos with Virtualmin/Webmin/Usermin (im not payin big$$ for software or control panels) on it
      I have my home partition partitioned up with folders of the 20 - 25 customers I deal with

      Although I have used akeeba it complicates things more for me than anything else when dealing with customers sites using multiple software and im too tight to pay for Akeeba standalone

      So for each customer I have a little SSH (shell script or commands seperated by lines for newbies) -
      runs on crontab timetable unless i want it "now"
      compresses and gzips the current database/s for joomla/phpbb/anything else they use
      compresses the /public_html folder
      both above to /home/xxxxx/tmp

      Then I get it to sftp the files to the corresponding backup folder for the client eg /home/scott/customer/backup/

      Then on the completion of a good backup it deletes the /home/xxxx/tmp
      If it fails it emails me

      This happenes on a regular bassis anyway as part of my backup regime and is set using linux crontab to however many days the customer wants backups kept
      I can create an instant backup by going into the customers account via ssh and typing ./backup and grab it from home and use it


      Once home
      I use a simple script (or do it by hand) to copy the public_html backup to a folder on the webserver which mimics the customers site
      I use a simple script (or do it by hand) to extract the database to the same database used on the live server

      If everything goes right I should be able to go to http://localhost/customername/ and have a copy of their sites (most run more than just joomla) - sometimes I have to set cookie and path fields manually in the database

      Why do I do it this way??

      1> a simple backup script can do far more eg: backup joomla/phpbb/crm databases and sites than the joomla extension akeeba backup can (but akeeba standalone is one very powerful mother ...... if you are not happy doing scripts like I am then this is the baby for you)
      2> its already part of my backup regime and mostly I just pick the last backup to play with
      3> linux makes the world go around - most of the backup sites use varying linux flavors (centos most popular) and one uses winblows so working on them at home is much more secure / faster
      4> a little knowledge on how to do cp/mv/tar/gz/mysql/mysqldump etc through ssh can be a lifesaver
      5> everything's at HOME on an OLD dual quad core server with 16 gig of ram -which in most cases is faster than the customers shared/virtual dedicated/dedicated servers are on the internet world
      6> The backups of 30 odd sites is dones automagically and to my home - I also need to backup the backups and these are kept in a secure location at the lawyers next door in case my place burns down


      The simple scripts I use are FREE from the internet and most need no altering at all except account/database info
      several I use are like this
      Some are far more complicated taking several servers and several databases and sending them home

      Whats the best bit ....... its all free
      Whats the worst bit ...... you need a lot more linix winblows mysql knowledge ..... but not a lot!!!

      I hope that "alternative" way of site management helps
      nearly all the sites i do this for are personal or non profit organizations so I charge them very little (mostly zero) for the service

      but for those that want to try the linux option themselves at home
      newbies i would go with linux mint as it dual boots nicely (after backing up current)
      install an addon called tasksel
      once installed from terminal run "su tasksel"
      choose LAMP install (I fink it stands for linux apache mysql php .... but could be wrong but that is what it does)
      let it do its thing and answer the mysql root passwords
      not sure on running/setting up linux server LAMP bits .... get webmin (free) www.webmin.com/ - if using linux mint install the debian package of it and once installed log in as root at https://127.0.0.1:10000

      I hope that gives some people other ideas or ways of doing things - be it one site or 100

      cheeries
      Scott
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    Re: Site Management

    Posted 9 years 5 months ago
    • Sub folder in your root directory. Call it 'test', or whatever else you want to. then it will be yourdomain.com/test

      This ensures there are no discrepencies between different servier configurations. If it works in 'test' it'll work 'live'.

      You will need to alter .htaccess rewrites so rewrites work in the 'test' site. Also add the 'test' directory to robots.txt as disallow so it doesn't get crawled.

      I've always done this, though there could be better ways for all I know.

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