Ocean West Posted May 20, 2014 Posted May 20, 2014 How do some sites do it with live and integrated sites where you have the 'current' operating version and a link to view the new and improved site all the while be able to toggle between the old and new until the site owners mandates the "new way", the end user being able to actually start using the new version, instead of every user all at once. I'd like to see at some point in the future a way to do this with IPS products by using the 'REAL' site with actual traffic and being able to see users interacting with new features. In the past over the years i have always made a duplicate of my site and the database and then play around with all the new settings and features till I fully get to know the backend then invite a few of my mods or members to kick the tires in a system that well - will all be deleted and have to be re-done again when the real upgrade happens.
Rhett Posted May 20, 2014 Posted May 20, 2014 There isn't a method to merge content from a test site and a live site, you could, but it would be a pain. What most sites do is setup a test/dev site, upgrade, test, once they are comfy and all is well, upgrade the live site.
Ocean West Posted May 20, 2014 Author Posted May 20, 2014 yea i know, most of the sites that do this like banking or other blogs with comment systems its usually just eye candy not really underlying schema and functions - but it would be nice.
rct2·com Posted May 20, 2014 Posted May 20, 2014 It would be nice, but challenging(in my opinion). There are often changes in the structure of the database tables and folder structures in version upgrades. There would need to be some 'on the fly' changes in where files and data is stored and retrieved to allow both versions to work together. That feels like a lot of work for IPS to do, and I'd rather they focused on other areas.
Mark Posted May 20, 2014 Posted May 20, 2014 It's called Parallel Running :smile: This moment is possibly the first time in my entire life I have called on something I learnt in high school computing.
Izaya Orihara Posted May 20, 2014 Posted May 20, 2014 It's called Parallel Running :smile: This moment is possibly the first time in my entire life I have called on something I learnt in high school computing. I've tried this before in the past(where my live site was running old version and the test site was running a new version/beta I think it was). However when I did this, whatever changes I made to the test/beta version seemed to also effect the live version. How do people do it where they have their data running on the beta version of a site without it touching the live version?
rct2·com Posted May 20, 2014 Posted May 20, 2014 It's called Parallel Running :smile: This moment is possibly the first time in my entire life I have called on something I learnt in high school computing. It is. We use it a lot at work. Except that we usually have 2 separate systems and move over a few users at a time. That's not really feasible with IPS products.
rct2·com Posted May 20, 2014 Posted May 20, 2014 I've tried this before in the past(where my live site was running old version and the test site was running a new version/beta I think it was). However when I did this, whatever changes I made to the test/beta version seemed to also effect the live version. How do people do it where they have their data running on the beta version of a site without it touching the live version? When planning an upgrade, I always make a complete copy of the database and all the files, put them on a different secret URL, upload the new files to the secret URL, run the upgrade scripts then play with the new version and WRITE DOWN everything I've changed, so that I have a 'script' for when I do the upgrade on the live site. This way means that the secret area is completely orphaned from the live site, and no changes made to the secret area get added to the live site. In your case it sounds as though you had 2 versions of the code files but they were both sharing the same database?
Izaya Orihara Posted May 20, 2014 Posted May 20, 2014 When planning an upgrade, I always make a complete copy of the database and all the files, put them on a different secret URL, upload the new files to the secret URL, run the upgrade scripts then play with the new version and WRITE DOWN everything I've changed, so that I have a 'script' for when I do the upgrade on the live site. This way means that the secret area is completely orphaned from the live site, and no changes made to the secret area get added to the live site. In your case it sounds as though you had 2 versions of the code files but they were both sharing the same database? I cant even fully remember lol it was like a year or so I did it :) But I do know I had them on different domains at least my forum was at example.com and then the test was on example.com/test I'll of course be doing this when the beta for 4 come sout.
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