[NashChristian]

Originally Posted by Lynne

Jeff, you asked about the purpose of a test board. I use it to test out anything prior to putting it on my live site. But, besides that, the major thing I use it for is upgrades. For instance, in December I finally upgraded my board from 3.0.12 to 3.6.8. I started in November by taking a copy of my live database and putting it up on my test board along with the 3.6.8 php pages and running the upgrade script. Then I installed all the hacks I needed and rewrote the ones I had originally written. After I had it running how I wanted, I took down my live site for an upgrade. Then, I knew I had a couple of other mods to write, so I did them on the test board, exported the product and then imported the product onto my live site. The product/plugin system makes it very easy to move a mod from the test site to your live site. Currently, I have upgraded my test site to 3.7 (only beta 2 at the moment). I am now rewriting some more of my hacks to take advantage of some of the changes made to 3.7. I would never install a hack directly onto my live site without first checking it out on my test site. Of course, I am also one of those that rarely uses a hack as-is. I always seem to want to tweak it a bit for my site.

Hello Lynne,

So just to make sure I understand, say you are upgrading your site to the latest and greatest version, after you get your test site setup, hacks and mods to your happiness, everything running smoothe, how then do you move these changes onto your live site? You said that you did it all with just a couple of hours of downtime, which is impressive! Do you delete your live site folder and then recreate it by copying your test environment via FTP?

Then you would just have to reconfigure the database to use your live data. And you would likely have to redo any changes done in your test environment which were stored in the database.

Or do you simply run the upgrade script on your live site, import the templates from your test site, individually import each plug-in from your test site, and manually make any other changes that you've made where the settings are stored in the database? You manually write these in your notebook as you implement them on your test site, then you manually implement them on your live site as well during this process?

Which would best describe how you actually do this? I just want to understand how best to take advantage of a test site myself. I don't want to do something the "hard" way if there is an "easier" way that most of the world is doing it.

Thanks ever so much!
Jeff