The Best Development Environment

[davide101]

I have been updating vBulletin the old fashioned way: backup, download files, copy to server, overwriting existing files, running upgrade script. I do it this way for all of the software. My site is becoming big enough and such an important part of my livelihood, that I want to start doing it the 'right way'.

My first intuition is to install svn or some other versioning package. After that, I'm not sure exactly what the proper flow is. I'm sure there are hundreds of self-taught administrators that are in the same shoes.

Could one of you resident Judo Code Masters share a good process flow for updating vBulletin so that it's easier to move back in case of an emergency?

I'm sick of overwriting something by mistake, digging through old backups and trying to find a way to repair the damage!

[Eikinskjaldi]

Originally Posted by davide101

I have been updating vBulletin the old fashioned way: backup, download files, copy to server, overwriting existing files, running upgrade script. I do it this way for all of the software. My site is becoming big enough and such an important part of my livelihood, that I want to start doing it the 'right way'.

My first intuition is to install svn or some other versioning package. After that, I'm not sure exactly what the proper flow is. I'm sure there are hundreds of self-taught administrators that are in the same shoes.

Could one of you resident Judo Code Masters share a good process flow for updating vBulletin so that it's easier to move back in case of an emergency?

I'm sick of overwriting something by mistake, digging through old backups and trying to find a way to repair the damage!

You don't mention what OS your board is running on.

I use cvs. I am not sure what you mean by flow though. If you are hacking vb core files directly instead of using hooks then you will also want to set up a patch system.

the only solution:

1- use products instead of file edits... if your hacks are too old, ask someone to upgrade them to the product/addon level.
2- use styles that have not much template edits... the more complicated styles you have, the more job you have on upgrade
3- backup everything before upgrade

... when you have a clean forum, you have no problem upgrading... the more shnoot added to your forum, the more problems you have when upgrading.

[Josh1]

Use SVN, then everytime you get to a stable point you can easily bring it across to the server. When I'm developing, I do 0 changes to the "live" site, and keep all my changes within my dev environment.

[davide101]

Eikenskjaldi, My OS is CentOS. It's a standard LAMP setup. I don't hack files at the moment and have moved everything to projects.

Nexialys, I have learned to follow those three steps religiously. My templates are as simple as possible. I used to go crazy with that but now see the value in only making a change if it's critical for usability.

Josh1, I think my problem is that I don't have an efficient development environment. So perhaps that's really my question. What tools or flow do you use for developing on your test server and pushing it live. Is there a book I should read on the subject or is this pretty straight forward? I'd love to hear more about how you've setup your testing environment and how you move things around in more detail.