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#36493 Admin Tools Pro Use in Test Environment

Posted in ‘Admin Tools for Joomla! 4 & 5’
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Environment Information

Joomla! version
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PHP version
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Admin Tools version
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Latest post by nicholas on Monday, 24 January 2022 09:59 CST

enclavecoa

I use an extension named STAGEIT from PHP Web Design to create a staging / testing environment for my website.  This tool creates / refreshes the testing environment by copying files from the public_html folder into a sub-folder named stageit beneath public_html.  I can logon to their the live or the test environment independently.

Whenever I refresh my testing environment (stageit), my Admin Tools Pro extension / plug-ns are also copied.  

QUESTION: Should I configure the Admin Tools Pro in the testing environment -OR- does Admin Tools in my live environment take precedence over both the live and the test environments?  If the later, should I disable Admin Tools Pro in the test environment?

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager

The way you describe the staging works is very inadvisable for two reasons.

1. Your site is more than just files; it's also database contents. Since the staging does nothing to copy the database you essentially have two sites which read from and write to the same database. This is not a staging site, it's a disaster in progress...

2. Putting the staging site in a subdirectory of the main site means that the .htaccess of the main site is applied to the staging site and this causes all sorts of issues as warned in https://www.akeeba.com/documentation/akeeba-backup-documentation/restoring-backups.html#general-guidelines (see “Do not restore in a subdirectory of your main site” and “If you are restoring on a subdomain, make sure that the subdomain's root directory is NOT a subdirectory of your main site”).

So my advice would be to not use this problematic workflow. You can always take a backup of your site with Akeeba Backup — the free of charge Core version is enough! — copy the archive to the subdomain's web root folder using the hosting control panel's file manager, upload kickstart.php there and restore the site using a different database to the one used by your live site. Transferring from staging to live is the opposite process: backup the staging site, restore to the live subdomain.

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

🇬🇷Greek: native 🇬🇧English: excellent 🇫🇷French: basic • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

enclavecoa

Perhaps I didn’t explain the situation clearly.  Stageit copies both the db and .htaccess as well to the sub-directory called /stageit/.  One of the first things I have to do is change the base directory to /stageit/ in the .htaccess in the stageit sub-directory.

nicholas
Akeeba Staff
Manager

Point number 2 I made earlier is still valid.

Please do read  https://www.akeeba.com/documentation/akeeba-backup-documentation/restoring-backups.html#general-guidelines (see “Do not restore in a subdirectory of your main site” and “If you are restoring on a subdomain, make sure that the subdomain's root directory is NOT a subdirectory of your main site”) as noted earlier to understand why this would be a problem.

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

🇬🇷Greek: native 🇬🇧English: excellent 🇫🇷French: basic • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

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