Do split testing with Drupal

By msamiec on 26 Aug 2005 at 06:38 UTC

What do you find to be the most effective method for trying out new things on your website, without having the general public see your changes?

For example, if you have a drupal site up and running, and have visitors, but want to mess around with your current site and the xhtml layout... what do you do to set up a "testing ground"?

Comments

two choices

sepeck commented 26 August 2005 at 07:15

Test on a test server (you do have one right?) with a copy of your live database (so now you've tested your backup process)

-or-

Load your theme, create an account and assign to that theme. Log onto your site with that user to view the result. Have two browsers so you can be logged on as admin with the other.

-sp
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Drupal Best Practices Guide - My stuff Black Mountain

-Steven Peck
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Test site, always start with a test site.
_{Drupal Best Practices Guide}

Create a separate installation for playing around

varunvnair commented 26 August 2005 at 07:24

I personally prefer never to touch the actual site for experiments and/or playing around. I have a separate local installation that I use to try out new modules, tweak stuff etc.

I think this is a simple and effective solution. You are not screwed if something goes wrong and the public cannot see your changes. Once you are done playing around and satisfied about doing something you can make the same changes to your main site.

I take a backup of my actual site and create a local site (i.e. on my machine) with that data and then play around with it.

My Drupal-powered Blog: ThoughtfulChaos - Varun's Blog