Best way to update store

[karasulas]

G'day,

 

My intention is to have two copies of my store on the same webspace: one for the public to use, and another one for me to make adjustments to and then copy the whole thing over to the public one. This way my customers don't have to see any messes I make while installing contributions, adding products, etc.

 

When I bring the changes I've made over to the public store, I don't want to clear anything my customers may have done to their accounts (including creating them) - which files should I avoid replacing? And are there any other things I haven't thought of that I need to be careful of?

 

Thank you very much for your help,

Alexander Karasulas

[Avec]

Set up a "development" or "test" directory. Copy everything to that directory and make your changes there. All you need to do is make the necessary changes to the two configure.php files and you are good to go. When complete, simply copy the changed files to your live store.

 

If you really need to, you can create a second database, but this is not necessary.

[karasulas]

Thank you for your reply :)

[Guest]

Thank you for your reply :)

On your pc, you can install wamp or xamp or similar. When done, create the database, copy the web files to your pc in the www directory, adjust the two configure.php files, use the backup of your web database to populate the the database on the pc.

[Guest]

On your pc, you can install wamp or xamp or similar. When done, create the database, copy the web files to your pc in the www directory, adjust the two configure.php files, use the backup of your web database to populate the the database on the pc.

 

Do these let you view it on your PC? I want to work off line just like a webpage. That also gives me a backup if the webserver was to crash.

[box25]

Do these let you view it on your PC? I want to work off line just like a webpage. That also gives me a backup if the webserver was to crash.

 

Yes they do, they create a local server environment, that you can work on, without fear of doing any damage to your main site. Dead easy install and setup

[Recidivist]

A good plan is to have a 2nd instance running on a separate domain or subdomain, but running on the same machine. The only difference will then be in the config files. This way you can treat it like a completely separate site not accessible by your customers.

 

Running it on the same server, using the same versions of php/mysql/apache as your live site will tell you immediately whether your changes will run when made live. Running a test site on a local machine away from your live site might not do this.

 

Of course, the downside to this is if you make a programming mistake which, perhaps, chews up all your server's memory or cpu (or some other error), this might affect your live site as well.

 

KB