Maintaining a site with both dev and live environments
Posted: Thu Mar 01, 2012 12:47 pm
We've built several AbleCommerce sites with development environments which we then copy over to a production environment. The two environments do not share a database. This is fine for the initial launch, but we've come across some difficulties when trying to add content and products later.
When a client requests new content or help with adding or editing products, we'll make the changes first in our development environment. We have the client review the changes and approve, then we'll move it to the production environment. Pretty standard stuff, I think. However, the catch is that all of the content and products are stored within the database, and we haven't found an easy way to copy that information to the production database. We end up doing the work twice, once in development and then again in production.
So, my question. Is there some tool or process out there that would allow us to easily transfer the new data to the production database? It would be best if it was automated, but at this point, just about anything is better than manually recreating the information.
When a client requests new content or help with adding or editing products, we'll make the changes first in our development environment. We have the client review the changes and approve, then we'll move it to the production environment. Pretty standard stuff, I think. However, the catch is that all of the content and products are stored within the database, and we haven't found an easy way to copy that information to the production database. We end up doing the work twice, once in development and then again in production.
So, my question. Is there some tool or process out there that would allow us to easily transfer the new data to the production database? It would be best if it was automated, but at this point, just about anything is better than manually recreating the information.