Hello friends! Is it ok to ask questions related to self managing wordpress without gridpane? I’d love to know what workflow are you using (if any) to have staging and production environments with wordpress, with the ability to sync in both directions, failsafe, it doesn’t matter if it costs me. I’ve looked for a solution for ages, but couldn’t find any good recommendation. In gridpane I know I have the option, but I have other sites with digital ocean “plain”. Thx in advance!
Answers:
Here is another “staging” setup you might consider. You can setup a new site on another server with the same domain then access it via a custom hosts file as document in this GP KB: https://gridpane.com/kb/how-can-i-edit-my-local-hosts-file-to-redirect-urls/
GP has a good feature to clone sites from one serve to another. You can use this as a staging setup. There are pros and cons going this route but the biggest pro I have found is you are not messing with the final URL. I have found a few edge instances where WP-CLI and even the top 2 Search & Replace plugins sometimes leave behind a few instances of the dev URL. When developing in the actual URL, you can avoid this issue entirely.
I use the All-In-One WP Migration plugin, which is also used under the covers by GP itself I’ve heard. Just use that to export your DO site, and then import it with the same plugin into a GP-built site “container”. Poof, in about 5 minutes not counting data download/upload time, you’ve converted to GP.
We use Migrate DB Pro that allows you to connect multiple sites and push/pull the DB, Media Files, and theme/plugins. We’ve found this works better than any providers staging solution.
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