IPS 4 Stability

[CheersnGears]

Just now, NoGi said:

Wow, that’s a long time to setup a test site. It takes me around 5 – 10 mins max to have a UAT site up and running. I’ve also never had an issue with IPS providing fixes based on what’s happening on my test site. Might be because I can show that my test and prod sites are identical.

If it helps, and apologies if I’m repeating what you already know, this is how my test site is setup. It is an identically configured VPS (hardware and OS) with a different host. Every night, my production forum folder and SQL database is archived and synced to test. This acts as my offsite backup. Whenever I need to test a new release, it’s a simple matter of uncompressing the latest backup and updating the config php file to point to the test site. The test site is behind a .htaccess username/password so that the public cannot access it.

Every release for me is tested first in UAT before I will attempt the upgrade on production. I don’t test everything, just the core functions that 80% of my users would be using (post, reply, gallery, pm, search etc…)

I don't do the nightlies like you do.  Each time I do it, it's a manual process. 

[Aiwa]

That's one thing rsync is good for.  Set up a backup routine with it, type in one shell command and BOOM, you have a SQL and file backup you just have to un-archive, import, and change the conf_global.  

[NoGi]

6 minutes ago, CheersnGears said:

I don't do the nightlies like you do.  Each time I do it, it's a manual process. 

Doesn't have to be nightly, you can use cron to do it at whatever interval you like. I also take a weekly and monthly snapshot as I age the old backups and remove.