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Site Restoration

#30864 Pre-migration: Development environments & SEF URLs

Posted in ‘Site restoration’
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Environment Information

PHP version
n/a
CMS Type
Other
CMS Version
n/a
Backup Tool Version
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Kickstart version
n/a

Latest post by on Saturday, 02 March 2019 17:17 CST

Wednesday, 30 January 2019 20:26 CST

webcoast
Hi Nicholas and David,

I have a question regarding copying a site. This is the scenario:

Existing old Joomla site needs updating (joomla, extensions, PHP, template). Due to unsuccessful prior attempts by the client, I think the work should be done on a copy of the site, rather than on the live site.

The site uses SEF URLs, and according to my ticket #15133 I cannot use temporary domain containing IP address and username with "~" on a site with SEF URLs. So, am I correct in assuming that I can kickstart to my development server and use a spare domain name eg testingsite.com , then when all work is completed, kickstart back to the real site, overwriting their existing old Joomla site. Since Joomla uses relative URLs this should work, regardless of domain name... correct?

I had considered kickstarting to a sub directory on their hosting account, but I want to be able to change the PHP version and test that it works before going live, and I can't achieve that if I keep it on the same host.

If you can think of any other things which I need to consider please let me know.
Thanks
Nicola

Thursday, 31 January 2019 06:38 CST

nicholas
Correct. This is the recommended approach. This is what we do for our own site's development.

Just a word of caution: it's a good thing you decided NOT to use a subdirectory because it causes two problems. First, you will find yourself battling against the .htaccess of the main site, wasting a lot of time for something you can't actually fix. Second, Joomla stores relative URLs. Relative URLs are always relative to the domain root. Therefore moving the site back to the domain root would break things (like images in articles) and you'd have to make manual changes.

Using a domain name on a development server is the best and recommended approach.

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

🇬🇷Greek: native 🇬🇧English: excellent 🇫🇷French: basic • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

Saturday, 02 March 2019 17:17 CST

System Task
system
This ticket has been automatically closed. All tickets which have been inactive for a long time are automatically closed. If you believe that this ticket was closed in error, please contact us.
Edited by on 2019-03-02 17:17 CST

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