Best Practices for Working with Dev/Test/Prod Environments

[Glowball]

Hi all, I'm using Dreamweaver 8 and I'd like to set up Dreamweaver sites according to best practices. Here is how the home page environments are set up.

Production:

http://www.sitename.com/foldername/index.cfm

Test: intra.sitename.com/foldername/index.cfm
Development: localhost:8500/clientname/sitename/foldername/index.cfm

How do I set up my Dreamweaver sites? The folder structure for PROD and TEST will match, but DEV will not match those two. I'd like to be able to develop in DEV without automatically pushing the files to TEST until I'm ready, and then not push the files to PROD until I'm ready. Yet, I'd like to have only one copy of the files instead of three sites, if possible.

I'm using ColdFusion so I can code any conditions into the base template as needed.

How is everyone else doing this? Is there a "best practices" for this written down somewhere? Thanks for all of your help and advice.

 

[lebisol]

Hello Glowball,
Generally you will have 2 sets of file min.
"live server" and "test server". To keep 1 set of files then all of your environment has to be on liveserver....which I would not recomend.

In your case of:
Test: intra.sitename.com/foldername/index.cfm
Development: localhost:8500/clientname/sitename/foldername/index.cfm

this depends...is this the same server (your machine)?
or do you have somethig on your machine + some local/LAN server you use to test out and THEN upload to live site?
You can have both point to your PC but make sure your admin points DNS to your IP/machine so that intra.sitename.com resolves.
It doesnt matter what type of folder structure you choose.

Local Info = your machine, your hard drive
Remote info = live site, generally pages you upload
testing server = can be your local machine or antoher server all together

"I'm using ColdFusion so I can code any conditions into the base template as needed."
-yes, one of the nice things about dynamic language such as cfm.
Ultimately check out:

http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=tn_14028

Hope this helps.
All the best!

:--------------------------------------:
Do the DW »|MostarNetworks|

 

[Glowball]

Hi, and thanks for the answer. We had to set it all up already, so I have one set of files that I test on my own CF server as development. Then another set of files were for a different test server. Still another set are for production. I hope it all goes well.

 

[lebisol]

Yap that sounds about right and that you are all set.
One thing to keep in mind is that builtin-ftp for DW is not as advanced as standalone ftp clients.
Some people have no issues with it...personally, after hrs of work, I forget what version to upload so I prefer something like filezilla.
So my last word of suggestion is to play with multi-user/developers uploading ("putting") files throuhg DW to make sure everyone understands the structure.
Goold luck with the project!
All the best!

:--------------------------------------:
Do the DW »|MostarNetworks|