Approach for Staged Development Wanted: Dev/Test/Prod with Dynamic Data

I am looking to determine if vData can help facilitate the dev/test/prod model of website development of Joomla using RocketTheme/Gantry templates.

I posted in the Joomla forum the post: Approach for Staged Development Wanted: Dev/Test/Prod with Dynamic Data .

I am looking to determine if vData is a tool that can make this possible and whether there are:

• Any problems in using this tool for this purpose (e.g., any extensions that it can't migrate)?
• From what I have read about vData, it seems like it can do this task, but might require extensive configuration to do it. Can anyone give me an idea as to the complexity for using vData for managing dev/test/prod staged deployments as I've detailed in the Joomla post above?

I am very much hopeful that this tool will make dev/test/prod deployments possible.

Hello,
Yes, you can use vData for the purpose. A reply has also been sent to your email received. Please check that for more information.

PS: Please do not post the same message at multiple places, it would delay the response process...

Hi Daniel,

Thanks for your reply. I'll try a subscription!

Enjoy,
Steve

I have purchased vData and am now looking to determine how to be able to take the development website (originally cloned from a production website) and after making changes to the site (new/changed/deleted files, extensions, templates, etc.) how to push that content to the production server.

The profiles that exist do seem a bit complex. For example, looking at the Joomla Articles profile, I see columns such as catid and created_by that have "Select Columns". I think this would require advanced knowledge of the database organization to be able to know how to create a profile.

Also, I didn't see any obvious mechanism for running multiple profiles. This also makes me think that vData is targeting people who have advanced knowledge of the Joomla and extensions database tables, columns, etc.

So, how can I use vData to accomplish my primary purpose of doing staged releases from dev to prod without damaging prod dynamic data? Is this a use case that requires that I contract with you for additional development?

Hello,
As you said, you want to move everything from one website to another. In that case, please do not use the default profiles. Please create a profile for each database table you want to sync and use the Quick Import/Export checkbox so that you don't need to set the values for each database column. It would work for you.