Design deployment workflow for the site

[hagbardc]

With multiple developers for the site, and a site that is live (and hopefully under more regular use) we should have a deployment workflow that allows us to deploy and rollback packages safely and confidently. Features of such a deployment workflow should include:

• Ability to work on our local machines
• Get a local instance of the site up and running in just a few steps
• Provide documentation that allows someone to understand the code / site structure and plugin dependencies relatively easily
• 1st stage of deployment should be to a (the) staging site. Deployments should be handled via code checkout from a specified branch of the github repo (we should not be pushing code from local machines direct to stage or prod)
• 2nd stage of deployment should be to the prod site, again direct from the github repo

[iwksnyder]

@darvelo -- Would you own this task? This is super important, and we are planning to have an in-person meeting the week of June 10. Would you be able to provide recommendations for this?

[imlindaryan]

I recommend this be part of an in-person Tech team conversation. When can this happen? @howardstevens @darvelo @kennybatf

[darvelo]

@iwksnyder @imlindaryan Yes, I'll own this task. I'm available any time for an in-person Tech team meeting! It would be good if we could have at least a few hours to build something solid together.

I recommend using Docker for building the virtual machine environment and using Git wherever possible to track code changes. Docker is easy to install.

I've got the public-facing site mostly working when running locally within a Docker container, a virtual machine that can be destroyed and rebuilt at will with the guarantee that the system files are identical on each run. I'm currently working on figuring out how to:

1. Get login working
2. Include git-tracked projects (like this repo) within the container
3. Ensure changes within the Wordpress admin are tracked so that we know exactly what changes are in a build. Wordpress makes changes directly to the database so this will be a challenge.