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A good idea for web designers and site admins - Mirror your Site

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mouser:
There's one thing i've done on donationcoder.com that has made life 100x easier and safer, and i think it's worth posting about, and that is to have a mirror site for testing.

That is, have a copy of your website/forum/services/etc., installed on another account or server.

Use this copy to test any changes before you try them out on the real site.  For things like forum modifications and new services, it offers a safe and easy way to develop things without worrying about mucking about with the real site.

Rover:
That's excellent advice.   :Thmbsup:

Did you just save your bacon?  That sounded a little like "Man I'm glad I did this, otherwise I'd be totally screwed right now."   :P

mouser:
no, but i've just been thinking about how useful it has been.  it's obvious when you think about it, but i think it's one of those things you might not normally think of until it's too late, so i thought i should share it.

the other nice side benefit is that it acts like a backup.

housetier:
I have done this myself too with my site. As some of you might remember I had it up first on http://housetier.kicks-ass.net/, but I also kept a separate installation with the same data at http://housetier.ath.cx/. That way I could play around with one site, without running the risk to loose any data. It was a little bit of trouble time-wise to keep the (valid) data in sync, but it also SAVED MY ASS when I moved it to the new location.

I will spare you the details. I vehemently support mouser's idea of keeping a (one-way) synchronized mirror site! Do take your time to set things up, and test that the synchronization works. Then test that the rollback works. If need be you can quickly switch from mirror site to life site, and quickly is good.

Make Backups!

eschen:
Seems to me that you have a lot of complicate tasks to get both databases in sync, or do you have a tool that helps to get the diffs out of the first to get these into the second database without trouble?

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