>Do any of you know if there is a way to stage discussion boards with Web
>Crossing? We'd like to prepare a board for a launch but don't want it to
>appear until we're ready.
Tim replies:
If you want to just hide the to-be-real boards but make them
available for developers/review, there are a couple of ways to do
this: If you are running webx in direct http mode, you can just
configure with a non-standard port so no one sees it. Or in cgi mode,
you can rename the cgi script.
If you want to have a stable production environment while you work on customization changes in a staging environment, you can set up a second copy of WebX. On the main site, do a webx-sysop backup, then copy the webxdb.1 file and all the tpl files into a new directory where you've installed and then shut down Web Crossing. Rename the webxdb.1 file to webx.db, and restart the second copy of WebX. It is usually easier to run the second copy with direct web service, regardless of how you are configuring the main copy. To come up with direct Web Service, make a file called WebPort that has a single line in it, the ip:port for Web Crossing to listen on, then start Web Crossing. It will see the WebPort file and do direct web service on that port. The URL for a new site with direct web service is http://yourdomain:port/WebX on Unix, or http://yourdomain:port/webx on Windows/NT or Mac servers.
I'm going to be away for a few days, if you need more info you can always email support@lundeen.com
Then bagus wrote back:
>Thanks Tim,
>
>I guess the question this second solution begs is how does one then
>migrate stuff from the staging environment to the live environment?
>
>Is something like that built in?
And he wrote:
No, but it is pretty simple. The key files for Web Crossing are
webx.db, webx.tpl, and any tpl files you include into webx.tpl.
If the staging area is used just for customization, then you can migrate this by just copying the webx.tpl and include files into the live site, and using the webx-sysop-panel command to reset the webx.tpl cache. This will load the new templates and you are up and running.
(If you also made changes to the sysop settings in the staging area, you can export the sysop settings from the top-level export button, and import these into the live site. You have to be careful here because the sysop settings also include the site configuration, so you might want to diff the live site settings against the staged settings to make sure you don't replace something that affects the live site access/etc.)
If the staging area is used to keep a new community hidden while you work on it, then you can shut down both production and staging webx servers, copy the webx.db, webx.tpl, and included tpl files from the staging area to the production area, and restart the production server. In 3.1, there is a file called webx.set that control all the interface from webx to the outside world, so you can have different versions of this in the staging area and production environment. 3.1 binaries are available for most platforms in our ftp area, we are working on building everything for this so let me know if you need one that isn't there. (Or send support a note wed-fri while I'm away.)