Thanks geoff. I was referring to FarCry as the CMS.
We'll use one production server setup for multiple virtual sites. So, in this situation,would the typical setup be one production server and one development server, each running their own installations of FarCry, MSSQL (or whatever database) and Coldfusion MX? When developing a new website, often you have content that you start off with, and you design/develop according to that content. So, since FarCry stores all of the content in the database (if that is correct), does that mean content you insert during the development stage cannot be copied across to the production server in the way that you copy the code files across? What do you usually do? >>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 09/09/04 18:58:02 pm >>> E Publisher wrote: > My question is, how does implementing a CMS change the > development/production environment? It depends on the CMS. In the case of FarCry you have a whole variety of deployment options from single machines to clusters of many machines. I'm assuming you have two physical boxes: a development server and a production server. Typically in FarCry all content staging is done on the production box (its not necessary but is a typical approach). Note this is *content* staging and not *code* staging. FarCry has the concept of a "virtual staging server". This is simply the ability for users with appropriate permissions to browse the website as though draft and pending content was live -- effectively giving you an /in vivo/ view of your changes. The development server is used for testing code changes. This would literally be any change that might affect the stability of the site. Once you are happy that the code/template/design/whatever change is tested, you would migrate the code to the production environment. > It seems that the model of working on a development server then copying > the changed files to the production server doesn't fit because changes > made to a website by content providers via the CMS are done directly to > the live site (production server). Yes, absolutely right. There is no need to review content changes on the development server. > What do you do when you want to work on redeveloping a section of the > website using existing content without affecting the live site? All CMS approach these things differently; in the case of FarCry... If you were simply changing the content and not the site hierarchy (ie. navigation) then you could simply work with draft objects of your current live objects -- the standard FarCry content editing model. On the other hand, if you want to work on fairly sweeping changes to a section of the site, you might be tempted to copy the entire branch in question, send it to draft and work on the copy. When you were happy with the new section you send it live and deactivate the old branch. The only disadvantage in this approach is that you lose track of the history/archive of the individual content pages once you copy them. (complete branch copy/paste is a simple right-mouse-click operation in FarCry!) > What's the best development/production environment setup? This depends entirely on your requirements. We have clients with production environments ranging from 8 dedicated machines to simple shared hosting. -- geoff http://www.daemon.com.au/ --- You are currently subscribed to farcry-dev as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Aussie Macromedia Developers: http://lists.daemon.com.au/ --- You are currently subscribed to farcry-dev as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Aussie Macromedia Developers: http://lists.daemon.com.au/
