map7890

Thanks both!

1) export production database
2) tar production WP files
3) import production database to development database
4) untar production WP files to development filesystem

As our sysadmins are going to create an exact replica of production onto a test server, all of this should hopefully get done as part of it.

Our upgrade process is sync production to stage, upgrade WP core and plugins, and test. The entire process is documented. Then we set a date and deploy on production. Prior to production upgrade, we backup WP database and WP files.

That is the enterprise process. Nothing on production should change without being tested first; and always have a backout procedure.

My upgrade process is planned to be similar to this. I want to test all updates on the test site and will document it, once I’m happy that the upgrade went well then I will do it on the production.

Doing stuff to the cloned site won’t affect the live site as there’s no link back to it. It’s effectively a whole other website, just identical (at the point of cloning). So it is already ‘staged’. Thinks out loud: if any links in your site are coded as full addresses like https://intranet.my-company.com/ then when you click them you’ll be taken to the live site.

So does this mean that the cloned site will automatically be set to staged? Do I need to change any settings to say it’s staged or create a new domain/URL for this? I’m just a little bit concerned that anything I do in staged does not affect the production.

When you’re happy it has all worked and updated you can either just make the cloned site the live one by changing your DNS (ask your sysadmins) or ask them to clone it back. Bear in mind that if lot’s of people are adding things to the live site while you’re testing in staging, then the databases will be out of sync. You’ll need something to merge the databases, but this isn’t my area of expertise – I would just search for a plugin which does it.

I’m not planning to clone the staged back to production because lots of changes will have been made in the live site in that time so I’m not too worried about merging the databases. I only want to use the staging site to test the upgrade and if successful, implement it in production later.

^^ re-reading this it sounds a bit rude. I apologise – wasn’t intended that way. I just meant that if I had been asked to do this at work I wouldn’t want the responsibility if I wasn’t 100% sure it would work.

Don’t worry, no offence taken ??

• This reply was modified 7 years, 9 months ago by map7890.

Hey @jkhongusc

Thanks. We are not a business but any advice would be appreciated.

Hey @neilgilmour

Thanks for replying.

I’ve just found out that our sysadmins will be cloning our site onto another identical server. Therefore, is there a way to set the cloned site to staging mode so it doesn’t affect the live site? Or should i be doing something else?

So essentially, I would want to deactivate. Then to free up space, I can manually move the data to another location?

Yes i want to free up hard disk space. Just to confirm – if I ‘delete’ a site, does that still keep the data?

I don’t mind if users don’t have access to the site, search engines or losing rankings. However, I would like to move the uploaded media files to another location and have the option to re-activate the site if required in the future.

Yes most of the space is taken from the files.

Thanks nnikolov. To free up space on our server, I was thinking of archiving/deactivating old sites and then copying the folders containing all the blog data to another server or file store?

Would this be the correct way to do it or is there a better way to do this?

Also, do I need to do anything with the database?