Hi,

 

I've had a little experience with Git on a personal level, mainly to get to grips with it. In this case I had a local WP installation set up on ampps, I'd make changes and when I was happy I'd push the changes to Bitbucket and FTPloy would deploy them to my live server. No problem, simple enough.

 

Now, the question is, how does this work for a large ecommerce site? At work we have a dev server and the live server. At the momement, we simply use FTP to try things on the Dev server and when it's signed off, it just gets manually FTP'd to the live server. What I'm confused about is how do you try things if I don't have a local server set up?

 

I had planned on getting it set up so that things are pushed to the dev server, once it's signed off it gets merged with the live server code base and pushed to the live server. I don't understand how this works though, do I have to push/commit everything I want to try whilst developing to the dev server? That's a lot of hassle...

 

How do you manage such a use case?

Why are you using FTP with git? You should be using SSH. SSH and Git used in the terminal means you can deploy very quickly. I'd probably quit my job if my place used FTP the difference is that vast.

 

Also if you're using git make sure you're using a .gitignore file so you don't commit local specific things like wp-config.php if using wordpress, .htaccess. anything installed by grunt etc.

 

 

All the devs at my place have local servers, then we have a dev server. Competed projects that are client approved then gt pulled down to the live server.

Edited June 19, 201412 yr by rbrtsmith

I'm not "using" anything with git atm per se, and when I have used git for personal stuff that's how I did it though, I dunno, maybe because it's still quite new to me and I'm not fond of CL work..

 

Yeah, I have considered that thanks

 

That's the problem though with this situ @@rbrtsmith, we can't have local servers, we don't have full access to the entire codebase (back-end stuff, think magento go stylee) but we do have access to the template files/css/js/etc. So I just don't see how it can be done easily when you have to push everything to the dev server. A typical case is when you keep adjusting and doing minor changes in css/js over the course of a few hours, this would mean lots and lots of minor pushes which is a hell of a lot of hassle compared to just dragging and dropping a file in an ftp client. Maybe I'm misunderstanding how it works entirely..?

 

Cheers.

I use Git on a daily basis for version control and deployments even on a large scale.

 

Once set up it is easy to deploy a site.

 

As rbrtsmith says you shouldn't try and use Git and FTP as this will cause errors when you deploy. If you are making minor changes to the CSS etc then are you doing this locally before deploying it?

 

One good thing about Git is that many people can be working on the same project and often the same files at the same time.

As rbrtsmith says you shouldn't try and use Git and FTP as this will cause errors when you deploy.

 

If you are making minor changes to the CSS etc then are you doing this locally before deploying it?

 

Well the plan is to make the changes and have Beanstalk deploy the changes to the live site once it's tested so shouldn't need to touch the ftp.

 

In response to your question, that's the trouble I'm having understanding.

 

At the moment the set up is this:

 

Test/Development Server (internal access only)

 

Live/Production Server (public facing)

 

When a change is requested, I connect to the dev server via ftp, download the files to change, work on them and upload back to dev server. And so on until I've done whatever I was asked to do. Then that server is checked and if everything is okay, I tell someone what files changed, they take them from the dev server and upload to the live server.

 

We only have access to the front end (templates, js, css, etc). All heavy backend stuff is managed by a third party and isn't accessible nor is it possible to have a local (my machine) version because it's managed by a third party.

 

So, how am I supposed to work on the dev server if git is in the way and everything needs to be pushed to the dev server again and again? This is why I think I may have a misunderstanding on the process. I work for a company as big as Argos, New Look, etc. I am sure they have version control though.

 

What I had hoped to have set up is this:

 

*(insert bit I don't get, lets pretend I do have a local version)* I make the changes as requested, those are then pushed to the dev server. Once it's tested and signed off, those changes are pushed and merged with the live server code and Beanstalk takes care of deployment to the live server.

 

So that bit in *(...)* is where, as I understand it, is where a local version should be. But as this is not possible, how do other companies do it? I should mention the third party that handles the back-end of the site also manages other well known big brand sites too, at least some of them must have version control set up...

 

It's getting very annoying and I can't find answers anywhere

 

Thanks.