There are various ways of updating a live site and I see questions over and over how to update live sites. I want to share mine. Sometimes it's good to see how others do it, and I also hope to get some feedback where I am totally wrong.
If someone wants the word file write to mb (at) marktold.com
Sitefinity Updating
Assuming you have:
Created your site localy on c:\mysite
Created you database mysite_db on server
Have the site c:\mysite uploaded to the server and run it to be connected to mysite_db
Basically having a site up and running
Update process by marktold
Backup site
1) Create c:\mysite_4_3_1733 (current version number of live project)
2) Create c:\mysite_staging
3) Download www.mysite.com live content to c:\mysite
Make sure that App_Data\Sitefinity\Configuration\DataConfig.config is pointing to the database you are backing up in the next step!
4) Copy c:\mysite to c:\mysite_4_3_1733 (This is your backup if anything fails)
5) Copy c:\mysite to c:\mysite_staging
Backup DB
5) Create backup of mysite_db (db on server)
6) Download mysite_db.bak to c:\mysite_4_3_1733 (This is your database backup if anything fails)
7) Create new DB on server mysite_db_staging
8) Import the mysite_db.bak to mysite_db_staging (on server)
Check if a backup would work
9) Change the connection String in
C:\mysite_staging\App_Data\Sitefinity\Configuration\DataConfig.config
to point to mysite_db_staging database
10) Crate new web on server staging.mysite.com
11) Upload c:\mysite_staging to staging.mysite.com
Well, now we should have a copy of our production site on staging.mysite.com pointing to mysite_db_staging.
Test if it works. If it does, you know you would be able to create a backup from c:\mysite_4_3_1733 and c:\mysite_4_3_1733\mysite_db.bak
Update staging to see if update runs ok
12) Download the new sitefinity.lic from your account for the new SF version and save it
(I save it in c:\mysite_staging)
13) Download the new sitefinity.exe, run it and import the c:\mysite_staging project
14) Make sure you don’t have c:\mysite_staging open in Visual Studio and run upgrade
15) Now I delete all stuff on staging.mysite.com (I don't want any leftovers of old stuff)
16) Build your project (I don't rebuild because some of the dlls always get lost :-()
17) Upload the c:\mysite_staging to staging.mysite.com again
18) Access staging.mysite.com - to my knowledge now is the time when mysite_db_staging gets
updated. This takes some time. I have VPS, on shard hosting you might have to do this
locally on a DB to avoid timeouts.
19) You will be prompted for license file (remember we downloaded it in step 12)
Test if everything works. If yes, we have proven that the update process would actually run and work ok.
Update live site
20) Now you have two options. Use staging DB and staging site or update real site same way.
Make sure your live site DataConfig.config points to mysite_db and NOT
mysite_db_staging
21) After you updated your life site you might want to download www.mysite.com to
c:\mysite to have all the updated config files again locally (it’s always good to have a second
backup locally. You never know when your provider might have a data loss they cannot fix.
Markus
