One of the most difficult approach to using WordPress and WooCommerce as an advanced environment is how to handle deployments considering that WooCommerce/Wordpress are all made of the following features

– code base, plugins are added statically. VIP already provides/suggests a way to import plugins using composer instead so they dont need to be committed, with thousands of files and vendor folders in git
– configuration: plugin /site configuration is in the db, often this cannot be easily separated as it could store configuration in wp_options or in custom tables
– ensure transaction/customer data is separated and protected. I.e. using the sledge hammer approach of copying SQL files from prod to local does carry all personal, user, transaction (for instance for WooCommerce) information. Obviously copying all this data could cause legal trouble and data loss.

REQUIREMENT
Based on the preface, and any other aspect pertaining to your experience, could you suggest how you handle local -> UAT -> PREPROD -> PROD deployements?
making sure you dont have to sync data from prod to dev and without any manual workaround?
For instance I am planning to run my local dev.site.com TO UAT –

At the moment I am

1. doing a git archive of the code and deploy on UAT
2. sql dump with string replace of domain name to map destination domain, deployment of this on UAT
3. rsynch assets from uploads to UAT

Obviously with this approach I cannot deploy to live as it will delete all the transactional information, users etc being created on the WooCommerce site.

Then how to

1. plugins/site configuration: but how to upload just the data for plugins and configuration without affecting customer or product data?
2. ensure customer, previous data is not corrupted, for instance orders and users

If you have a strategy could you please share?

If I understand correctly, you’re essentially looking for a method to selectively migrate data between environments – right? Assuming that’s correct, the following will come in handy: https://deliciousbrains.com/wp-migrate-db-pro/

Thank you for the suggestion. This plugin or similar are not providing a solution unless you know the underlying architecture … ie they are based on selecting certain tables … so you need to know what tables to select.

In this respect how does one achieve the goal of a safe migration?
Do i need to dig each single plugin, reverse engineer it and decide what to copy?

I dont really need a plugin for table dumping or selective table dumping as this is what I am doing already. I guess one needs its own solution in this case as WooCommerce/Wordpress status quo is to just use a domain and set everything on a single environment.