I'm putting the site I've been developing locally online today. I'm developing locally on Linux and hosting online with Linux. The site is a video hosting site with social networking and I just wanted to clear a few things up before I upload it.
1) Should I create a test site online aswell as my live site?
2) What is the procedure for transferring local development work online? Do I just copy the copy the entire drupal directory to my online web hosting? And then in future when I make any changes/updates just copy the drupal/sites folder from my local site to my online site, overwriting the existing drupal/sites folder in the process? What about the database, I obviously can't be uploading the local drupal database in its entirety every time I make changes to the site or I would lose all my user and content data from the live database?
3) I'm using Linux Mint on my laptop but my hosting is on Red Hat Linux, will this be an issue in anyway?
Comments
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1) unnecessary
remainder:
turn clean urls off (precaution)
in your database
clear cache tables (clears all cache from local site build)
clear sessions table (ensure all sessions are cleared)
clear watchdog table (clears any any all errors/messages from local site build)
export database
import database on live server
move all files and folder over to live server
edit settings.php to point to new database the line you want to alter is $db_url
login to site
reenable clean urls
your site should now be live
1) Depends... If you're about
1) Depends...
If you're about to replace a Live site with your new Drupal site it might be a bit embarrassing if you do discover something about the live environment you did'nt anticipate.
I would have a test version until I was sure it worked ok.
Ok thanks for the answers, I
Ok thanks for the answers, I see there is a difference of opinion on the necessity of a test site. I might just create one and leave it empty for the moment and re-evaluate down the line if I need it.
What is the situation as regards updating/modifying a live drupal site? I'm thinking of things like if I added a module to my local site that added a table to the database....how would I go about putting that on my live site? As obviously I can't just overwrite my live site's database or I'd lose all my content and users.
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The previous commenter is under the impression you already have an existing site, if you do not a test site on the server itself is unnecessary, especially when you have one on your local machine.
new modules and module upgrades.
put site in offline mode
export live database
put site back in online mode
import live database into test site on yoru local machine
insert new modules, test the test site for functionality
if all works. set live site back in offline mode and add new module, set it/them up and set site back in online mode with new features.