As an independent designer and developer, Ive established a fairly straightforward approach to developing client sites. Get the deposit, set up the site locally (via MAMP), install Modx and were on our way. Upon approval I move everything over to a live site. Bingo bongo. Usually changes/additions were made on the fly as I would purposely spend more time on the site architecture to avoid the invariable client request for complex structural changes.
Ive subsequently moved into an agency environment, and their development pattern is a little less, shall we say efficient. We use a combination of hosts, CMS etc, which I am trying to streamline. A lot of their work is based in concrete5 (dont get me started) but they basically use the live / staging development pattern. While it has its benefits, its a bit of struggle to make more structural changes (such as adding new functionality etc) and then getting client approval, then transferring it from staging to live.
Which brings me to my question, in theory the live/staging method is sound, but like I said, its seems quite inefficent and duplicative. As a Modx Evangelist (been a part of the family of developers for half a decade) I would like to know everyones opinions on the staging / live versions as it relates to Revo. Is it possible (or even desireable) to set up a staging / live development environment in Revo, using one primary database for management of both section, and sharing certain components (such as assets and such) while still maintaining the separation between the live and staging environments, and making the hand-off between the two as efficient as possible?
Whats the SOP for this type of development pattern? How do my friends of the Revolution do it?
We have multiple servers where I work, if a existing customer having a new site we just build it on a different server than their live site and then change the A record on their DNS to point to the new server when ready to go live.
For new customers that are coming over to our hosting the same as above and for those that are keeping their own hosting we simply transfer the completed build once ready as it only takes 30 mins.
