How you work with pw on external server

[olivetree]

As a pw newbie, I am curious. How do you work with processwire if you the processwire instance is located on an external server? 

[Jan Romero]

I have a local copy that uploads changes  via FTP on every save because it’s easy. If I’m just trying stuff out in production I slap “if (user()->isSuperuser())” on it 🤣

[TomPich]

I always install pw locally. Then I use rsync to push and pull modifications, quick and easy.

[millipedia]

I'm with Jan here. I have a local copy of the files I'm working on (templates, modules, assets etc) and then ftp them from VSCode using the SFTP extension.

I don't have the files upload automatically when they're saved but my muscle memory for uploading a file on save is good.

I've tried using Remote Host in VSCode and occasionally use continuous integration with GitHub but for most of my projects that's overkill.

[Sanyaissues]

PW running on DDEV local containers for deploying and then a shell script (or sometimes duplicator) to publish to a live server. 

[elabx]

Configure the repository cloud provider (gitlab, github, etc) to use pipelines to upload with rsync on commit of main branch. If it's content stuff, I assume I have to go do it manually or create a migration that adds new fields, templates, new pages, etc. 

[olivetree]

Many thanks @elabx @Sanyaissues @millipedia @TomPich @Jan Romero for your different views and workflows how you work with Pw and a external server.
That is really helpful for me, because up to now all content, code, structure and templates were handled and setup on my previous CMSes I used.
With PW it seams to be a bit different and I thought perhaps there are one or two best practices. But thanks to your answers I found a whole bunch of great possibilities. So cool. For me as pw beginner it's like starting with PW itself, I have to find my best way how to work and manage things with PW. 

[elabx]

1 hour ago, olivetree said:

That is really helpful for me, because up to now all content, code, structure and templates were handled and setup on my previous CMSes I used.

How did you use to do it? I think most of our solutions should apply to any PHP based CMS.

[bernhard]

Interesting thread. I'll add RockMigration deployments to the mix. I'm working on a video about it 🙂 And I'll probably improve the process along the way...

[olivetree]

11 minutes ago, elabx said:

How did you used to do it? I think most of our solutions should apply to any PHP based CMS.

Thats true @elabx. I am coming from Bludit and WP, which were installed via hosters applications (softaculous) or one time via upload into the webdirectory. Then everything I've configured through the WebUI and optically adjusted through themes via an theme editor (wp greenshift odr livecanvas). I had a staging and an production instance, so everything took place on the external servers (and backups of course). I really seldom used an ftp/sftp access anymore or took the way via git like you mentioned configuring a website. It was no need for.  I first read about DDEV in this forum, which seams quite interesting.

Many thanks @bernhard for adding your RockMigrations deployment -> the collection of possible ways of work is still growing in all directions;-) 

Thats why I asked how you all work in my metnioned case, just to become an impression and ideas how others work/handle with pw. Because on the first sight as pw beginner, I had the idea everything is happening in the pw admin gui like in other CMSes. I recognize that there are workflows were a "click and configure" are not as efficient or effective as an API or local dev or so. I like that learning curve;-)  

[elabx]

2 minutes ago, olivetree said:

Then everything I've configured through the WebUI and optically adjusted through themes via an theme editor (wp greenshift odr livecanvas). I had a staging and an production instance, so everything took place on the external servers (and backups of course). I really seldom used an ftp/sftp access anymore or took the way via git like you mentioned configuring a website. It was no need for. 

Thanks for sharing! That's a nice setup I get it now! I

Wouldn't these tools support ProcessWire? (I remember it being available on Softaculous) Or are some parts of these tools tightly integrated with Wordpress/Bludit? 

[olivetree]

15 minutes ago, elabx said:

Thanks for sharing! That's a nice setup I get it now! I

Wouldn't these tools support ProcessWire? (I remember it being available on Softaculous) Or are some parts of these tools tightly integrated with Wordpress/Bludit? 

I am not a deep diving webdev like many of you. With WP I learnt many things about Bootstrap (used it via Livecanvas Builder) and build some things with CSS frameworks (Pure and Bulma). I decided to build my own website with another tool from ground up with pw;-) 
  
Since PW is available via Softaculous for the first steps its ok (install, db, and try pw admin), since it installes the intermediate site-profile, but then I wanted to go through the Pw install process itself, tested around, installed pw many times, installed different site-profiles to discover the different output strategies and tested  @bernhards cool site-rockfrontend. And enjoy this friendly community with soooo many hints and ideas, even for PW beginners. Really great.

[Ivan Gretsky]

Hey @olivetree!

You can use Remote development plugin for VS Code. This way you can work on your staging (or prod if you like cowbow coding)) from a locally installed VS Code via ssh. It install VS Code server on a remote machine and connects to it. So you do not need to have anything but VS Code locally.

There is similar thing in PhpStorm I know nothing more about)

[Sanyaissues]

@Ivan GretskyI used to do Cowboy Coding (just learn the term! Love it) all the time, using Cloud9, so I only needed my browser to code. Then I switched to VsCode and remote development, but extensions started eating up my small server instance's memory (The default @builtin TypeScript extension is a RAM monster! and I wasn't even using it!). I spend half my time monitoring server-side extensions... until I finally made the switch to DDEV.

1 hour ago, bernhard said:

RockMigration deployments

That's definitely in my next-to-try list @bernhard

[olivetree]

Thanks @Ivan Gretsky for your VS input and the mention of cowboy coding. I will try VS remote dev out as an experiment and have @Sanyaissues mention about RAM monsters in VS code in the mind.  

Edited 20 hours ago by olivetree
added RAM using monsters

[bernhard]

I also like the "cowboy coding" term, but I want to add that VSCode remote can not only be used for cowboy coding but also for - I don't know how to say - regular tasks!

I'm using it on a regular basis to do different things on my servers that I manage. It's great, for example, for editing files that are not part of the automated deployment - eg /site/config-local.php

Browsing files, moving folders, searching for keywords in the codebase, temporarily adding something to the codebase, etc.; All of that is extremely comfortable to do with VSCode compared to doing it on the command line.

So it's definitely a tool that is worth to have and worth to know!

[kongondo]

14 hours ago, Sanyaissues said:

Then I switched to VsCode and remote development, but extensions started eating up my small server instance's memory (The default @builtin TypeScript extension is a RAM monster! and I wasn't even using it!). I spend half my time monitoring server-side extensions.

I have recently had the same experience. In my case it looked like the culprit was DevSense PHP Tools. I gave up on it but the problem persisted with PHP Intelephense. Finally I gave up and went back to local development and set up a CICD with GitHub Actions which watches my main branch and pushes stuff to the server when main branch is updated. Works a treat!