development vs live site

[MeAppBuilder]

Hello,

I was just wondering how I can update a live site. Currently I am developing an unpublished site with Fabrik. When this site goes live, I would like to keep on developing on a copy of this site that will be located on a sub-domain. Is there a safe way updating live site with my changes? Can Akeeba Backup deal with this?

 

[aabhapure@gmail.com]

ohh its very nice, i am new on this forum and I have got new function of this forum.

 

[cheesegrits]

Yes, as long as you only make changes on your dev site. By which I mean any changes, not just Fabrik.

What I typically do when I'm ready to make any sandbox changes live is save any data tables from the live site in phpMyAdmin (well, I use Navicat), restore the sandbox as live with Akeeba, then reload the data tables in phpMyAdmin.

-- hugh

 

[MeAppBuilder]

Just to be sure...

On my live site, users are still writing to database (articles, eshop...). At the same time I am working on a copy of the site, where users are not active.

How can I update my live site and still keep all new entries that users have recorded, as well as the updated system tables for e.g. templates, positions etc?

Does Akeeba recognize just the relevant changes and keep all new user records with live site?

When you reload the backup of the current tables upon the dev tables, that is when you actually bring the dev table on current db level?

 

[cheesegrits]

No, Akeeba doesn't know anything about what tables have changed.

You have to know which tables to back up from the live site, and restore after a migration.

-- hugh

 

[MeAppBuilder]

I might look for some kind of "staging" extension, that does this job or I have to dig into the rabbit hole Thank you for answer.

 

[MeAppBuilder]

For anyone interested, I might check out this staging tool:

 

[MeAppBuilder]

Well, with StageIt (payed download), you can exlude db tables, but you still have to sync live tables with the db structure. This tool only helps to sync file structure with 1 klick. Might be still worth a try.

 

[troester]

With Akeeba you can also exclude DB tables, files and folders.
I didn't test but I think
you can do an Akeeba "Only Database" backup with all tables but #_fabrik_* ones excluded (exclude fabrik_connections, _log, _session, too)
New tables from new lists, new repeat tables etc will be included automatically (because they aren't explicitly excluded).

Then you can restore this backup on your live site (first test on a copy of your live site).
If you have made structural changes on existing tables/lists (e.g. new elements) you can do an "Update database" in the form listing. (I don't know if this can handle complex elements with repeat tables)

 

[MeAppBuilder]

Yes, with Akeeba Premium. Might be a good approach as well.

 

[cheesegrits]

Do keep us informed.

I know that staging is a problem with Fabrik. We had intended to solve that with the "Packages" feature we started building in 3.0, but that just turned into a huge time sink, too many issues we hadn't anticipated.

On client sites I work on directly, I tend to build my own custom staging methods, depending on the client requirements. But it would be nice to have some examples of using off the shelf tools.

It's just one of those things that stems from the organic growth of Fabrik over the last decade. It was never really intended for building large applications with long lifetimes requiring this kind of management - it started out life as "mosForms" in J! 1.0, basically for simple one-page "contact us" type forms that sat on a single table, and it grew like topsy from there. So we didn't start out with a code foundation that supports staging, and (as we have discovered) is not something that is easy to surgically graft on.

It is probably Fabrik's biggest weakness. One day I may have another crack at Packages, but ... it's scary ...

-- hugh