Test Environment Behaving Strangely
 

I made a mirror image of my forum (mysite.com) at mysite.com/test

I followed the instructions here:

http://www.vbulletin.com/vbcms/conte...ng-A-Test-Site

The problem is, every time I change something on mysite.com/test/admincp, the change also reflects on mysite.com - I first noticed this when I changed the cookie path to /test/, and suddenly everyone got kicked out of mysite.com!!

I tried changing the title to TEST, and mysite.com got a changed title to TEST!

What is going on? Fortunately tools.php helped me fix the main site, but I need a working test environment that I'm not afraid of :) I don't even understand how this is possible, because config.php is literally going to two different databases. So how is one updating settings for another?

Totally different cookie prefix, username, and password in config.php as well.

Thanks!

Have you changed your site URL in your ACP? This is the first thing I do when making a dev.

Hi Disco_Dave, thanks for responding! Yes, I did change the site URL and homepage - anything else that might need tweaking? I'm wondering if maybe my old cookie is still stuck on the test environment, so it still thinks I'm making changes to the real site? I don't know, so confused.

I've honestly never heard of that happening, and I can't imagine how that could happen. Only thing I can think of of is if, however unlikely, your databases still have the same name. (?)

Nope, two different ones - just checked in PHPMyAdmin! It makes NO sense with them pointing to different databases - one should not be impacting the other. Could it have anything to do with my .htaccess?

Try changing the cookie prefix in the config, by default it's bb and I bet the cookie is conflicting with your browser and causing this... I've never heard of it doing this except in cases like DJ mentioned where someone had the same database name and details in the test site config as the live site which of course is how they are showing the changes made on one site on the the other.

Still sounds odd though.

Hi TheLastSuperman, thanks! Cookie prefix was already changed to bbqa :( So I'm not sure what the heck else could be causing this

Maybe your config.php file?

Hi ozzy, thanks! I can't find any other settings in config.php that I could change - I've switch the DB, username, password, and prefix

If you can do it, I'd recommend making your test site on a subdomain instead of on the same domain but in a sub-directory.

If your site is mysite.com, intead of doing mysite.com/test/ try doing test.mysite.com. You can add a subdomain easily in cPanel and then set it up there.

I've never had any issues doing it that way but I do remember running into some problems before when I would create it as a subdirectory on the main domain.