Suggestions for best way to do XF version control?

[entelechy]

I'm at the point now where I'm transitioning from designing and building my forum to launching, and until now using DigitalOcean droplet snapshots and reverting if needed has sufficed fine.

But as users begin signing up and using the forum, I've realised that I can't just revert to a snapshot from a week ago and wipe all of the user data during that period.

I'm also relatively new to software engineering as a whole, and care about using the best method of version control that I can for my forum, for long-term optimisation of the processes I'm implementing.

If anyone has advice on how they're managing version control, and any reasons to go one way instead of another, your experience would be very helpful at this point.

 

[BoostN]

What changes specifically? I would start by creating a local setup on your PC to dev/test and then you can move changes from there to production.

 

[Mendalla]

I would start by creating a local setup on your PC to dev/test and then you can move changes from there to production.

This. At my company we have multiple environments for dev and UAT (so we have our testers testing one set of changes while we keep working on another), but for a simple forum, just a single dev/test environment should be enough. Develop your changes, make sure they work as planned, deploy.

I put mine in a secured subdomain (test.xx.xx) on my host rather than a local copy because we have multiple admins who may get involved in work so I need it to be accessible to them.

 

[entelechy]

This. At my company we have multiple environments for dev and UAT (so we have our testers testing one set of changes while we keep working on another), but for a simple forum, just a single dev/test environment should be enough. Develop your changes, make sure they work as planned, deploy.

I put mine in a secured subdomain (test.xx.xx) on my host rather than a local copy because we have multiple admins who may get involved in work so I need it to be accessible to them.

So you run test.domain.com and domain.com as the live site and move changes from the test subdomain to the live environment when ready? Can I ask how to synchronise them when changes are ready to be added to production? Do you use a tool to update the live site?

Thanks

 

[Mendalla]

So you run test.domain.com and domain.com as the live site and move changes from the test subdomain to the live environment when ready? Can I ask how to synchronise them when changes are ready to be added to production? Do you use a tool to update the live site?

Thanks

Right now, it's not that sophisticated since dev is running 2.1 and live is running 1.5. Once I get things synch'd up (upgrade of live is this coming Saturday), then I'll start something closer to what you're describing. Style changes, which is most of the changes I tend to make, can be moved by exporting and importing the style. Other settings that aren't part of the style (e.g. the 2.x navigation) I am still looking into. So it depends on what I am working on and it's also still a work in progress. Given that we didn't even have a dev until late last year, even this is a big improvement.

 

[entelechy]

For sure. As mentioned what I've been doing is snapshotting the vps in DOcean, and restoring if needed. Works great without users, but what I need to do now is snapshot everything other than user content (posts/threads/messages etc) and be able to modify everything else but leave user content consistent. My problem is deleting a bunch of threads whenever I need to revert back to a previous development version for the site. Im new to this, and there's prob a simple way to deal with this but I'm yet to find it.