Staging Site Walk-Through

8Dweb

Hi Team, I have been through a lot of the enhance forums and also manual...

I have so much to learn about Enhance.

What is the actual process for staging sites?
I see that when I add a domain I can set it to staging, but, it does not resolve.
I am also uncertain where the staging site is deployed... is it in the customer's space or elsewhere?
If I choose App setup, is it fully automated? staging site such as customer.domain.staging.hostcompany.tld will resolve immediately?

As I read back to February, I can see there were a lot of comments and discussion, so I simply want to make sure I fully understand this so I can create a video for my customers.

Matt

8Dweb

Ok, I figured it out. I had set a 3rd level domain as the staging domain. I changed that and it is all working as expected now.

Any other tips that any may have are very welcome.

Matt

8Dweb

Ok, I have been working through the staging with one of our affiliated WP dev teams. They have said that this is basically unusable for the following reasons (and this would also affect any upcoming Joomla integrations/app installations)

Here is a brief overview of comments after our zoom meeting:

Staging:
- Issue #1 - clone a site, wp url’s are not updated in either direction - so this is a completely manual process. The wp-config file had to be edited to even get the staging site to load since it was redirecting to the cloned site.
- Issue #2 - Push site back - wp URL’s are not updated again - so another manual process (this really upset them since they all said, then this is not a staging system...) The general consensus was that this all seems rudimentary, though they did commend the staging url and ssl cert being automated.
- Issue #3 - There is a real need for this to be both staging and dev... They need to be able to select which content and tables (similar to WPvivid staging) so important content/users/changes on main site are not overwritten (see #4 & #5 for further comments)
- Issue #4 - This is unusable for those wp admins doing all on dev/staging site and only push changes back to main site…. (Think cloud ways; WPvivid, etc..)
- Issue #5 - not really usable as DEV site per sae at this juncture… since it could be insecure during staging, early site dev, or even while using as staging and/or dev to do all changes that get pushed to primary site. There needs to be a method of securing the staging/dev sites from setup.

Adam

We are currently overhauling the staging/push-live functionality based on customer feedback. This will be released in November. At the moment "push live" turns the staging site into the live site by re-mapping the domain. What will happen after the update is that the files/databases will be pushed to the existing live site but will leave the original staging site intact for further development.

8Dweb Staging:
Issue #1 - clone a site, wp url’s are not updated in either direction - so this is a completely manual process. The wp-config file had to be edited to even get the staging site to load since it was redirecting to the cloned site.

On cloning, the WordPress site URL is updated in the database using wp-cli. However it sounds like maybe this was being overridden in wp-config.php so the change made by Enhance would not take effect.

8Dweb Issue #2 - Push site back - wp URL’s are not updated again - so another manual process (this really upset them since they all said, then this is not a staging system...) The general consensus was that this all seems rudimentary, though they did commend the staging url and ssl cert being automated.

If you're using "push live", this does not currently update the WordPress site url. This is address in the forthcoming update. In the meantime you can do this in the control panel.

8Dweb Issue #3 - There is a real need for this to be both staging and dev... They need to be able to select which content and tables (similar to WPvivid staging) so important content/users/changes on main site are not overwritten (see #4 & #5 for further comments)

This is coming in the update. You will be able to select directories and databases to exclude from the sync.

8Dweb Issue #4 - This is unusable for those wp admins doing all on dev/staging site and only push changes back to main site…. (Think cloud ways; WPvivid, etc..)

This will also be possible after the update.

8Dweb Issue #5 - not really usable as DEV site per sae at this juncture… since it could be insecure during staging, early site dev, or even while using as staging and/or dev to do all changes that get pushed to primary site. There needs to be a method of securing the staging/dev sites from setup

Are you wanting to restrict access to the staging website?

8Dweb

Adam Adam, thanks. As for securing the staging/dev site. This will be a big deal moving forward, since these sites are not always as secure as one would hope the final product will be. I have no issue with this being optional, But, if it is a dev-type site, it will need security on front/back-end, so that the staging/dev site cannot be utilized against the dev and/or end-user.

there may also be A/B scenarios being played out behind the scenes, or big announcements that the end-user/agency does not want public...

8Dweb

Adam On cloning, the WordPress site URL is updated in the database using wp-cli. However it sounds like maybe this was being overridden in wp-config.php so the change made by Enhance would not take effect.

Hmmm. This might need to be considered. We run into a number of sites where the url is set in the wp-config... So, any way to add that to the automation when the site is cloned into the staging site? It could be removed, commented, or changed....