Running identical sites for Development and Production

OK, here' another annoying post from the Modx newbie (Revo 2.2) asking about something that's already been discussed at length in previous posts...

I read them all and still am baffled. Or I unrealistically long for a simpler solution that does not exist.

I would like to have two identical sites. In one site, a group of content contributors can have at it, adding and editing to their hearts' desires without anyone else seeing it. Once the frenzy dies down and we are all happy with the changes, I transfer the updates to the second, live, site.

Now in the old (pre Modx) days, all I had to do was copy and paste any files that were new or updated-- maybe a few html files, a few new images, and the css file if any style changes were made. And my system admin never had to even get involved.

But now, with Modx, what I've read thus far appears to require a doctorate's degree in computer science (so I exaggerate).

In my other threads, several of you have kindly put things into terms I could grasp. Maybe that's not so easy with this subject?

With MODx, resources are in the database, so you would need to export the dev database and import it into the prod database. Files such as images, css and js files can be uploaded as before.

With Revo, templates, chunks and snippets can also be "static", with paths to indicate where the static files are kept.

So really all you would need to export/import from the database would be resources and their associated template variables.