Request for Recommendation: Sandbox vs. Live Environment

[linna]

Hi All,

I'll admit I know the answer to my question already, and like any true developer and non-sysadmin with root access (eg, forum superadmin hosting their own forum on their own virtual private server), I'm trying to avoid setting up a virtual subdomain to create a sandbox for a test environment. The TP site is a gratis endeavor for a hobby, and so I'd like to minimize the work component.

That having been said I obviously do not want to jeopardize the user experience for the people coming TO the site and having recently gone live, I don't want to break it real-time (been there, done that for Really Big Sites <tm> enough this life and we don't need that). 

If you are still with me:
* I've gotten TP v1.0.5 beta 1 up and running and successfully integrated with SMF 1.1.6 on a live site.
* I don't need to hack at the back end, probably just the styles.
* I just need to play around with blocks and panels and content designing the portal page.
* Right now the portal page is skipped, the home page is the content front end of the site, and the forum dumps you into the forum tree skirting around the TP structure until it's fleshed out and ready to actually be launched. So all that power of the frontpage is sitting there waiting to be unveiled once it actually has content. (Though yeah anyone who knows TP can go to the page and find it 'blank' without any blocks more or less.)

Is there a way I can create a second portal 'frontpage' OR a way to prevent anything I do to the front page from showing up on any of the forum pages through the admin interface alone? Or create a stand-alone page that will mimic the front page with display only (blocks and panes at least) so I can assemble it for display purposes and style sheet tweaking while still live?

What do people do in this sort of instance? Develop right on the live site? I'm no stranger to that, but this is going to be fairly high profile for a hobby site and I'd rather treat it production quality. How do people handle this if they don't have resources to handle multiple installs? I realize this software leaves a really small footprint all in all -- do people just name the second copy something different in the database and toss it in a different directory?

Anyway -- I've rambled enough and likely lost enough readers. ANY help or wisdom here is vastly appreciated.

Thanks much.

[Zetan]

You can create most of the front page, blocks, articles, and have the permissions set so that only you, the Admin can see them. Each block has it's own permissions, Article Categories have permissions. Articles need to be in categories to function, those articles will inherit the permissions of the category.

The problem there is you would need to set the front page to display TP first, and not go directly to the forum. This will give a blank page to members if the permissions are set to display Blocks and Articles only to Admin.

As for setting up a mirror page, TP has no funtion like that built in. You could set up a test site, which is what most people do and copy the contents across adhoc. Or, it would be a matter of a database transfer, which I know very little about, so I can't advise you there.

It really doesn't need to be more complicated than it is, we all manage to create our front pages without too much disruption to members, but I understand wanting to unveil it all as a finished product.

[Ken.]

As ZTN mentioned the simple and best way is to have a test site where you can try out themes, mods and design ideas and do any mistakes there without fear of breaking your live site. You've indicated that you don't really want to do it that way so here's a suggestion for an easy way to work within your livesite.

... expanding a little on what ZTN has already said:
Use one single TP article for your front page and include whatever content that suits your needs, including showing or not showing blocks to your visitors/members. Then, when you are ready for a new look or new content for the front page you would simply build a new article and once its finished to your satisfaction just replace the old one with the new one... that way the actual transition would be a matter of seconds.

[Bluto]

What about installing EasyPHP on your comp, and recreating the live site on your computer. Then you could build the page, and upload it when it's ready.
You would have to either change the path names or run repair settings after the upload as EasyPHP uses "local host" as it's mysql host.
In essence, you can recreate your entire site locally, work on it, then upload the files to go live.
More info on Easy PHP here: EasyPHP
You could also use Xampp, which does the same thing: Xampp

[linna]

You can create most of the front page, blocks, articles, and have the permissions set so that only you, the Admin can see them. Each block has it's own permissions, Article Categories have permissions. Articles need to be in categories to function, those articles will inherit the permissions of the category.

The problem there is you would need to set the front page to display TP first, and not go directly to the forum. This will give a blank page to members if the permissions are set to display Blocks and Articles only to Admin.

I do have a frontpage, it just takes a wayward navigator to find it -- it's got minimal content so it's not blank. I could tinker with admin only blocks around that. That's a good idea

I can do the db export/import no problem and the flatfile copying.

As ZTN mentioned the simple and best way is to have a test site where you can try out themes, mods and design ideas and do any mistakes there without fear of breaking your live site. You've indicated that you don't really want to do it that way so here's a suggestion for an easy way to work within your livesite.

... expanding a little on what ZTN has already said:
Use one single TP article for your front page and include whatever content that suits your needs, including showing or not showing blocks to your visitors/members. Then, when you are ready for a new look or new content for the front page you would simply build a new article and once its finished to your satisfaction just replace the old one with the new one... that way the actual transition would be a matter of seconds.

Thanks for the article idea -- right now the frontpage is just a hacked down version (eg, removed all but one block) of the base install. This will be better than what's there now for the folks who are finding it by happenstance (or know tinyportal!) and give me a chance to redirect them to the forum tree until I'm ready to have them finding the soon-to-be portal page.

What about installing EasyPHP on your comp, and recreating the live site on your computer. Then you could build the page, and upload it when it's ready.
You would have to either change the path names or run repair settings after the upload as EasyPHP uses "local host" as it's mysql host.
In essence, you can recreate your entire site locally, work on it, then upload the files to go live.
More info on Easy PHP here: EasyPHP
You could also use Xampp, which does the same thing: Xampp

This is probably a really easy solution for most people, but believe it or not I'm so old fashioned I am more comfortable running things where (don't laugh too hard guys) I have a FreeBSD server set up than on my Mac. (sigh) Ok, I probably could configure it all locally on my Mac but system administration is not my strong suit, and the server set-up I have already has some nifty virtual private server toys like mysql, php, apache, etc already installed. So it's actually easier for me to set up another server remotely than locally *blush* Just because I'm not a sysadmin sort, I hack my way through things as much I as I need to, to get to the developing part.

But this matter (just having a place to configure things) as well as the recent SMF patch have given me a good enough reason together to think about a test environment in general. Eg, what happens when the next incremental release of TP comes out -- do I really want to back out ALL my mods and such on the live site?

I found out that TP actually (lucky me) installed successfully on top of all the mods I had (yay) but that might not be the case in another month or so, so if I keep a true turnover document (gah sounding more and more like 'real' work now hehe) -- eg, a sequene of installation at least -- when a patch or somesuch comes, I can back out in order maybe and apply etc. I know that's no guarantee, but no matter what happens, I'm not going to end up wanting to do it to a live site that has any substantial membership/traffic.

So thanks everyone -- right now I don't have to rush to get the test site up and can tinker as ZTN and Ken suggested and get launched fully live sooner, and then work on a test environment and play it truly safe long term