Need MUCH better method for moving sites from development to production server

So far 3 days to move revo 2.1.2 site from development to production.

Procedure in rtfm.modx.com is very incomplete.

1) DB name is hard-wired into several places, things will fail if one tries to import the database, a common method of moving sites from development to production

2) Contexts are hard-wired into the DB as well -- same problem as above.

3) Provisioner addon no longer works due to security changes in 2.1.x...author says no fix in immediate sight.

Frequently development and production servers are configured very differently from each other, what works fine in dev may not work so well in a more secure production environment.

Result?? One must now often move modx sites BY HAND -- pretty much all other CMSes have server moves down pat.

Another example of MODx’ being so rough around the edges -- things like this must get fixed for MODx to get any traction anywhere.

Thank you, Tom

I have that on my todo-list, but did not wrote any line of code.

Anyone allready working on a Extra for moving content from one modx to another?

Probably one way to do it to avoid the issues that provisioner has is to do a selective mysql backup and restore...ask what people want to import from one site to another, do the appropriate export/import process, also requires verifying table prefixes and which items people want to import, most of modx can be moved from server to server by export/import the right tables, I did this today, then cleaned up a lot of things, I learned that after importing system settings TinyMCE likes to be completely removed and reinstalled.

HTH Tom

Did you run Setup in upgrade mode after moving the site? That’s intended to straighten out the paths.

I did try that...various things hard-wired into the DB caused me problems though.
Thank you, Tom

Quote from: TomMLS at Jul 13, 2011, 01:38 AM

I did try that...various things hard-wired into the DB caused me problems though.
Thank you, Tom

If they were built-in MODX system settings, it would be great if you’d report them at http://bugs.modx.com/.

If they were settings added by MODX extras, you could report them to the author or at the GitHub site for the extra under "issues."

Which page(s) were you referencing from the rtfm.modx.com?

This is what I posted and what I refer back to:
http://rtfm.modx.com/display/revolution20/Moving+Your+Site+to+a+New+Server

The process isn’t elegant per se, but I’ve never had a problem moving dev to prod...

Quote from: Everett at Jul 14, 2011, 12:34 AM

Which page(s) were you referencing from the rtfm.modx.com?

This is what I posted and what I refer back to:
http://rtfm.modx.com/display/revolution20/Moving+Your+Site+to+a+New+Server

The process isn’t elegant per se, but I’ve never had a problem moving dev to prod...

I did this process and it did not work for me, bringing over the database had various issues.

I ended up starting with a new installation, then importing in the actual tables containing data that I needed. Only drawback is that after system settings were imported anything that was blank/null in the original system settings created upon installed because it was never changed, these settings when the table was imported all got a December 31, 1969 date. I don’t know why, and it doesn’t seem to adversely affect the site, which is now in production.

Thank you, Tom

Hmm... the database component there is the simplest part of the transfer: it’s a straight up MySQL dump, *identical* to the step you’d take transferring any number of other web-apps from dev to prod. What issues were you experiencing?