Forum Moderators: phranque
This is one of the issues that I'm finding hard to get on top of. How do you guys and girls keep downtime to a minimum while doing upgrades and further development on a site?
For example, I've developed a few sites using Wordpress, and have always wanted to develop and upgrade the site on my computer when a new version comes out so I know all plugins etc. are working ok. Do you download the whole site, do your development, then re-upload everything and adjust the database as needed?
Also, how do I make this as smooth a process as possible? Do you redirect visitors from the homepage to another temporary page that explains you're doing scheduled maintenance while you upload your files and database from your development server?
If you do have a redirect in place, then how do YOU get to view the site to make sure everything is ok without getting redirected as well? Seems like a catch-22...
Any advice appreciated,
Cheers
The bit I don't do yet but should, is to then upload to a third test environment that mirrors the live machine as closely as possible. I do my testing on my development machine which is not ideal.
I SSH into the server and create a new top folder. Then FTP all code into the new folder. This is not yet live!
I have a 302 maintenance redirect I can put in place that redirects visits to the public part of the site to a maintenance page but leaves the admin side alone if I need to do any configuration or database changes.
Then back to the SSH to rename the current top level folder, then rename the new folder to be the new top level folder to put the changes live. Test live pages. If I need to revert then rename the directories back again.
