Create a testing server to try out new changes. Perhaps we should also add a sandbox mode to allow Devs to code without needing to set up a local host?
This would make it far easier for developers to contribute to the project and so the code would improve its ability to help the worlds most at need much faster than it currently can. That would be to deploy a new instance as a development server all the devs can test out and discuss new improvements on, and then to tell the any live sites to monitor the development server for new completed versions.
iām not sure the reasons behind why its better on a different domain and whether using our old one is a good idea or not. Focallocal.org will redirect to Publichappinessmovement.com as soon as i get someone to move our wordpress community news site away from there. Its not really used much now so its quite low on the to do list.
Or if its easier as you already have the keys to the server, just Dev.Publichappinessmovement.com as the plan is that this site will always be the Meta for those building on the codebase. Iāll be back online in an hour. Got to walk the dog.
Having it on a totally separate domain gets rid of the chance of having clashes between cookies for either site, and also means you have to worry less about security bugs on the testing server (as they canāt impact the main site).
The way Iāve done this on another project is registered a new free domain - .ga, .ml, .cf, and .gq are all free. So you could grab something like phm-testing.ga on Freenom and away we go.
Would the map on the testing site have a different MongoDB database to the other two sites, or would it also use the same one?
Ok, that makes a lot of sense thank you for explaining it.
Iāll grab something now. Databasesā¦ hmm. I guess that would mean any bug that occurred we could test live without needing to try to recreate the error, but then we would have to be a bit cautious letting people create test posts as theyād go live on the main site too.
It looks like mup can create a mongodb database for us, so that might make life simpler for the testing server. Did you grab a domain? Once itās configured to be managed by CloudFlare I can take it from there and set up Discourse and the map.
Also the ones i found were only free for a year. Do you want to go ahead and grab one?
Ideally longer than a year so we donāt have to reconfigure, but if thatās all which is available then go for it. Something like ātesting.happinessā, it doensāt really matter too much
oh, and good news. i found someone to join the team and (fingers crossed) get the React tasks complete this weekend.
I donāt think those are concerns we need to worry about. Iām not sure what theyāre saying is accurate, but even if it was, this is a testing server so it doesnāt really matter. Can always spin up a new domain if there are issues.
sounds great. iāve got two other projects also interested in running something on our codebase, which will add more devs and energy into the mix, so we could be putting up another 2 branches very soon.
Long term thinking weāre going to want it to be as easy as possible for 100 or more projects to be running their own instance, and then push all approved updates out at roughly a monthly interval.
Btw, should we make PRs to unit testing environment, unified deployment, or another branch. a simple diagram would be a pretty cool way to explain it. or just the details for one and i can ask the graphic design team to knock one up
Yeah, the idea in short is that people would merge changes to master, and once you want to deploy those changes you will update the deploy branches accordingly. Iāll spell that out more once we have the master branch in good shape.
