Having a test board is that a crazy notition

[mmoore5553]

I been working on some XF sites and other sites not related to XF and I ask people if they have a test board for me to work on. One which i can replicate the issue or to apply fixes on and the clients are like what test board.

Am i old fashion that i have a test board and do everything on it and then replicate to my real board. Or that i keep my test board up to date to mimic my live site . Is there a tutorial out there we can link people too so they have XF test board like there real board.

I guess I am just old fashion in having a test board.

 

[Lycaon]

I wouldn't say it's old fashioned at all.

It's better to mess up a test board than a live site.

 

[iTuN3r]

I always like to try anything on testboard before actually implementing in live board.

 

[craigiri]

We kept a test board up for 2+ months before migrating.
At first I invited my moderators in to test it, then more and more people until I was fairly sure that everything was OK.

As a result, our final move was pretty much flawless.

I did not update the test board to match........I see no reason to do that.

 

[Chris D]

Not crazy at all.

We have a test board and a live board.

Incredibly important.

 

[DBA]

Anything non style related gets tested out on our test site.

I actually have a completely separate domain (behind .htaccess) that's an exact mirror of the live site. This helps with testing redirection issues.

 

[EQnoble]

I actually keep a clean install on a clean OS with only a webserver installed as a single file virtual appliance...this way when I want to try something...I literally copy that file and paste and rename it somewhere else and boot the virtual OS in a app window...if I screw something up really bad...i have a new server and testbed deployed in seconds with xf already installed. . When a new version comes out I repeat the usage process but then update the board and save it as win.web.XF.1.x.x or centOS.XF.1.x.x so I know which OS and XF version combo I am opening and then have all the version archived so I can test things faster on all versions.

I suppose I could make a tutorial for it but I don't know how many people here use vmware.