your deployment process

[Chris]

hi, do you guys use some special deployment tools or do use interesting workflows for deployment you like to talk about?

actually i do it the olfd fashioned way: i'm developing on a local xampp and when i'm finished i upload the ftp-data to the webspace and import the database manualy with phpmyadmin.

but i like to evolve my workflow to a more flexibel deployment process. for instance it woud be nice to develope on my local xampp but to be able to syncronize to a dev.cooldomain.com website all my ftp and mysql data with a button click. i also like the idea to syncronize with an php-tool between two seperate folders and database on the webserver the live and the dev. version of a site, to test new things and show them to people etc. 

[pwired]

Much has been discussed about this during the time I was with modx evo and on their forums. FTP and mysql synctools are everywhere available such as Unison, Instantsyncftp, batchsyncftp, winscp - or - navicat, heidisql, sqlbuddy, etc. etc. etc. However, the problem is the database. You see - there are paths in the on-line database that simply depends on the server hosting your live website that are different from your local database.

Syncing the database between your local laptop and the on-line database can result in messing up these paths and result in disaster.

Besides that, it is not only you who is updating the database when for example editing a website. The on-line database updates itself also with for example the CACHE of the on-line website that totally depends on the visitors of your website.

Or for example a blog, users who subscribe to your website, counters, people who upload stuff to your website, etc. etc. Sooner or later the on-line database will be always out of sync with your local database on your laptop. If you sync then between them then data will get lost or overwritten on the on-line database.

While editing on your local website to cut and paste between your localhost install and the remote might not be as efficient, but it's much more disaster-proof. Only sync static files such as html, css and js. Try to keep them in 1 folder so you can easy update them with simple ftp between only 2 folders.

[Marty Walker]

I work locally using MAMP Pro (OS X). The 'problem' for me has been getting a development version in front of a client. I can't use port-forwarding and DynDNS at all and I'm a command line & GIT noob. But I recently discovered Pagekite which lets you tunnel your localhost to a publicly available URL. With a bit of tweaking on the MAMP Pro side of things I can serve a locally running site to a client for, not only review, but for them to add content. Example.

The last bit of the process is uploading the site files and moving the database when going live. If anyone is interested in more details of my setup let me know.

[kyle]

This won't help with the database, but have you considered using git?  For my workflow I develop on XAMPP and I use git.  It allows me to easily work between my laptop and desktop.  And when I am ready to show the site to a client, I log into my server do a git pull and then I update the database. 

[OrganizedFellow]

This won't help with the database, but have you considered using git?  For my workflow I develop on XAMPP and I use git.  It allows me to easily work between my laptop and desktop.  And when I am ready to show the site to a client, I log into my server do a git pull and then I update the database. 

I want/need to do this also, but I haven't learned GIT well enough yet.

So far, as the sole contributor to my projects, it works wonderfully. And I see the great potential to using it in a team.

Sadly, my host has git enabled, but my pulls are not working.

Something off with the host I guess. So for the meantime, I work entirely offline and then FTP (slowly).

[SteveB]

You see - there are paths in the on-line database that simply depends on the server hosting your live website that are different from your local database.

Syncing the database between your local laptop and the on-line database can result in messing up these paths and result in disaster.

Why? Almost everything can be relative to document root or the current page and arranged the same way locally and on the server. If something really must be in different places, manage that path info from one central spot. You could put those in /site/config.php as long as you are careful not to use any system names. People have their own ways of doing things but personally I think it's well worth the minimal effort to keep data and files as portable as possible.

I haven't been using PW very long but I haven't seen anything turn up that would be a problem. If I'm missing something please correct me. I wouldn't want to get caught out by that.

[owzim]

I use git in conjunction with git-ftp (https://github.com/git-ftp/git-ftp)

Instead of transferring the whole project, I thought, why not only transfer the files that changed since the last time, git can tell me those files. Even if you are playing with different branches, git-ftp knows which files are different. No ordinary FTP client can do that.

It's awesome and very convenient.

[einsteinsboi]

If working on my own personal projects I develop locally on MAMP and then push everything live to the server once done.  I don't use Git as much as I should, I need to work on that.

For client projects, I have a random domain name that I develop client projects on, I just make sure they're not indexed by any search engines and only the client has the url to watch the site build and progress.  Once I'm finished and they're happy and I've been paid I then migrate it to their server.  This has worked well for me over the years and keeps clients happy as they can track the progress of the build. 

[OrganizedFellow]

For client projects, I have a random domain name that I develop client projects on, I just make sure they're not indexed by any search engines and only the client has the url to watch the site build and progress.  Once I'm finished and they're happy and I've been paid I then migrate it to their server.  This has worked well for me over the years and keeps clients happy as they can track the progress of the build. 

Very interesting method, thanks for sharing!

[OrganizedFellow]

Have there been any new developments in this topic?

I've gotten better with git - merging, push/pull and keeping various branches on my dev station while the master here and there are synced.

[marcus]

My development workflow / deployment process is git- and beastalkapp-based, and heavily inspired by this video by Chris Coyer from css-tricks.com: http://css-tricks.com/video-screencasts/109-getting-off-ftp-and-onto-git-deployment-with-beanstalk/

Meaning:

• Working locally
• but having a staging server, more or less like the one einsteinsboi has described above
• and having a production server, the clients webspace

Beanstalk handles the deployments which tend to be automatically on staging (just the master branch) and - always - manually on production.

[clsource]

I found this

http://pointnorth.io/

and this

http://www.vagrantup.com/

maybe we can make a vagrant pw box for quick development?

[yellowled]

do you guys use some special deployment tools or do use interesting workflows for deployment you like to talk about?

I always start out with a prototype which usually includes 4-6 example pages in plain old HTML, hopefully spanning all the layouts needed in a project. After that, I prefer to work on the actual server which the site will be hosted on, maybe on a subdomain or different folder if it's a relaunch. The reason for this is that in my humble experience, development setups almost never match the setup of the client's server/webspace. There's always some kind of small difference, and I really don't want to waste time on replicating that in a local dev environment.

The prototype is usually based on a small starter project (I wouldn't call it a framework) I have built over the past couple of months. This includes a Grunt build script (which I love) including a lot of useful helpers like Sass, Bower, various tools to optmize images, Modernizr, jQuery etc. This also takes care of combining and minifying CSS and JS files, and it can even work with the PW templates I create after finishing the prototype.

As for the actual deployment, I haven't included that in the build script. There are Grunt plugins for that, but I'm not entirely sure that would be very secure. So I still use plain old (S)FTP and ssh (if available on the client's server, which unfortunately still is rarely the case) to deploy the actual templates to the (development) site.

[elabx]

Does anyone know of a "portable" solution? Something that encapsulates the whole Apache/PHP/MySQL, so that I can move to another computer and just open again the my text editor, start the server and keep on developing?

I read that I could do this with Vagrant and Docker but I´m not quite sure if I´m understanding correctly.

[tpr]

You mean portable web server for Windows? There's many of them, I use EasyPHP:

http://www.easyphp.org/

[elabx]

You mean portable web server for Windows? There's many of them, I use EasyPHP:

http://www.easyphp.org/

That looks really nice! But I'm not on Windows  

[Macrura]

portable web server. with PW... bitnami?

[OrganizedFellow]

That looks really nice! But I'm not on Windows  

Then what OS are you using?

[Adam Kiss]

vagrant (+ virtualbox) + git is pretty encapsulated

vagrant streamlines the process of generating virtual machines to develop on, by providing 'prepackaged' virtual images + options to include other provisioning software (like puppet, chef, etc.). Some use Vagrant VMs as 'apps', meaning that each project has its own virtual machine, some other people have one VM for multiple sites (a la *AMP software).

In your case, you could have your site versioned in git, together with your mysql dump and Vagrantfile (vagrant 'recipe' for your vm), and when you come to new machine, you'd do something like 'git clone project && cd project && vagrant up', go have a coffee, come back and start working.

(of course, it's never quite that simple IRL , but in gist vagrant is quite nice. I am in the process of setting up local vagrant from clean ubuntu + serverpilot.io over vpn. fun times)

[elabx]

Then what OS are you using?

Geez I'm sorry, OS X, sorry for the stupid omission.

[LostKobrakai]

A vm workflow is really nice especially cross platform. If you take a look at vagrant I'd suggest trying out ansible as provisioner. It's a damn nice and modular system, which can be used on almost any system you've ssh or console access.

[OrganizedFellow]

 ... If you take a look at vagrant I'd suggest trying out ansible as provisioner ... 

I took a serious try at Vagrant. Really, I did.

Spent a week trying its various plugins, hostupdater and some other useful ones I read about. In the end, it just complicated my workflow.

I have as many as 8 localhost sites in various stages on my machine. I use only two hosts (nearlyfreespeech and digitalocean). I develop on Debian. Git repos for all projects currently saved to bitbucket but soon may be moving to gitlab  

I really did not want a new instance of vagrant running for each project, costing me several gigs of space.

Otherwise, I totally loved the experience. I think it's a pretty amazing concept! I went with Scotch Box and liked having everything set up  

[benbyf]

I should really do local and then git to live buuuuuuut, on my solo projects I:

- work on a staging server (same type of server as live)

- export and install on live

- keep the staging version for template edits that can be copied across keeping the templates in sync but not the content

[elabx]

I took a serious try at Vagrant. Really, I did.

Spent a week trying its various plugins, hostupdater and some other useful ones I read about. In the end, it just complicated my workflow.

I have as many as 8 localhost sites in various stages on my machine. I use only two hosts (nearlyfreespeech and digitalocean). I develop on Debian. Git repos for all projects currently saved to bitbucket but soon may be moving to gitlab

I really did not want a new instance of vagrant running for each project, costing me several gigs of space.

Otherwise, I totally loved the experience. I think it's a pretty amazing concept! I went with Scotch Box and liked having everything set up

That NearlyFreeSpeech looks really nice! I might try them for my personal website to save some bucks!

[Jonathan Lahijani]

One thing I'm going to be working on soon is adapting Trellis to ProcessWire.

If any of you saw my video on adapting Sage for ProcessWire, Trellis is a project by the same group of people (Roots) which allows for you to setup an excellent development + staging + production environment using Ansible (and Vagrant for the development environment).  Because of the similarities between WordPress and ProcessWire (well, in terms of the server stack required and the fact that they are both CMSes), a lot can be borrowed from their setup in terms of approach and techniques.  They use WP-CLI for some things, but Wireshell can be swapped out for that nicely from what I've researched.

I'm really excited to see how it turns out because this has been a huge missing piece to my workflow.  This approach would replace things like Capistrano and any other deployment methods, assuming you use a dedicated VM for a site.

I highly recommend checking out Trellis to see how it's done.  It's thought out very well.