Posting updates to many modules/pages

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8/28/2008 6:10:54 PM
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Posting updates to many modules/pages

Hello,

I've inhertited a mojo based website from a previous developer.

The site is integrated with .NET and I've figured out how to add/modify modules that work on the site. However, I think I'm "missing" something.

We currently have a "Beta" server on which we test things out, including content updates, etc.

I have not figured out how to "post" all the changes to the production server in one fell swoop. I'm currntly having to update the modules by hand and then copy-pasting the content to the production server, as well as re-creating the module references on the production server. When we needed to put out an update that touched 20+ pages and 10+ modules, it took FOREVER to get it done.

I'm obviously missing something, somewhere!

How does one do a large update in a single pass? Can one someone point me to a document that covers this?

Thanks!

 

-tomas

8/29/2008 6:10:22 AM
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Re: Posting updates to many modules/pages

Hi Tomas,

I recommend that you NEVER push data from development or staging to your produciton server. If you do that you will be creating problems for yourself. Please see this article about deployment, I recommend that you always go the other way with data, that is, get a backup from production and restore it on development or staging for testing purposes. The only thing that should be pushed up to production is new builds of the code.

If the previous developer put all your custom features in external projects of your own as I recommend then you will be in good shape. If he made modifications to the code included with mojoPortal then he's left you in a difficult position because he's basically forked the code and now it will be very difficult for you to get updates of mojoPortal without losing the customizations.

Hope it helps, and I hope the previous developer left things in a good condition for you to maintain it.

Joe

8/29/2008 9:54:01 AM
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Re: Posting updates to many modules/pages

Thanks for the info.

All the code changes have been in the form of new modules that incorporate new bahaviors. AFAIK the mojo code is intact.

However, that still leaves the problem of not being able to "preview" proposed changes on the staging server before pushing changes to production. These are changes that are stored in the database (HTML content, custom module definitions, module settings, etc). As I mentioned, it took several hours to copy-paste the changes from staging to production last time.

Our site supports visitors from around the globe, so there is no real "down" time where we can just shut down the site.

Without this "preview" and "push" ability, making large changes (multiple page content, new hierarchy structure, new modules, etc) in a single pass, I'm not sure that mojo is the solution that we will need in the long run.

Again, thanks for the info.

-tomas

 

 

 

 

8/29/2008 10:03:00 AM
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Re: Posting updates to many modules/pages

What I would do is make a private staging area on your production site that is not visible to anyone except your content authors. Then you can review content and when you are ready you can publish it on public pages. If you notice the entire menu is driven by the view permissions of the pages in your site. If you create a role for Content Authors, you can create new pages and set the view roles to only Content Authors and no-one else but content authors and admins will see these pages in the menu or have access to the content. When you have new content that you are happy with you can easily publish it to a public page. This strategy is discussed in the bottom of this page.

Restoring a database from development or staging to production is really just not the way to go. Most sites will have user created content coming in all the time on their production sites, new users register, blog comments, forum posts, store purchases etc all update the production db, and if you restore a copy from dev you will lose that new data that was captured on production since the last time you pushed up the db.

Hope it helps,

Joe

8/29/2008 10:13:08 AM
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Re: Posting updates to many modules/pages

For new pages in your hierarchy its very easy to add them with the view roles limited to your content authors and then when you are ready to go live just change the view permission to all users. This way you see them in place yourself before they become public.

Hope it helps,

Joe

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