Implement staging site again

[johnsisland]

There is a need for the staging site. How much to implement it again?

[CodySwannGT]

What's the need? that'll tell me how best to handle it.

On Wed, May 31, 2017 at 12:18 PM johnsisland notifications@github.com wrote:

There is a need for the staging site. How much to implement it again?

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[johnsisland]

The need is so we can test before launching anything. It is important. At one time the cost was too much b/c of the amount of data we have. It's smart to have s staging site to approve changes before going live plus we paid twice to have one yet never keep them due to some cost. I want to know what that cost is. You even said to have one when you first took our account. Why the push back?

[CodySwannGT]

No push back but I'm trying to understand what the need is so I can say whether it's necessary.

For example, if you're hoping that a staging environment would have caught the https problems or the 1 MB upload problem, it wouldn't have.

In the case of https, there would have been no reason to foot the extra cost of using https as a transport as staging isn't visible to search engines anyway. And now that https has been implemented, we'll never have those same problems again.

In the case of 1 mb uploads, you wouldn't have known there was an issue unless you explicitly tried to upload a photo over 1 mb. And that you do so after every time we deploy updates (which again is weekly at minimum)

So my point is that a staging environment is generally for testing new features. Not regression testing or configuration changes. And from my point of view, we haven't had a new feature that requires testing in staging since we moved the whole site over.

If you want a staging site for regression testing, you're going to need a clone of production exactly as it stands today. So just take the cost of production and that's the cost of the staging environment.

On top of that, you'll need someone who can be in there testing - pretty much everything - each time we push an update or there's no real point in having one. It's not going to automatically detect problems.

I would also need to understand your plan for keeping staging and production in sync. Meaning - if I upload a photo to production or add a new listing in production, should it show up in staging too?

So I'm not pushing back, I'm trying to

1) understand what kind of staging environment you want so I can give you an idea of cost.

2) set your expectations on what a staging environment will and won't do so you can decide if it's meeting your needs.

On Wed, May 31, 2017 at 12:36 PM johnsisland notifications@github.com wrote:

The need is so we can test before launching anything. It is important. At one time the cost was too much b/c of the amount of data we have. It's smart to have s staging site to approve changes before going live plus we paid twice to have one yet never keep them due to some cost. I want to know what that cost is. You even said to have one when you first took our account. Why the push back?

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-- Cody Swann - CEO, Gunner Technology T: 213.915.4083 | cody@gunnertech.com | www.gunnertech.com http://www.gunnertech.com/Skype: cody.swann

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[johnsisland]

No, it's not related to any of the recent "issues". More about how we could've designed & tested the video page first, or how future new pages or redesigns/updates will work before launching live.

Is it possible to just add or activate a testing environment when needed?

[CodySwannGT]

Gotcha.

So for the new page - that was kind of a shotgun thing that needed to be done asap, so I just kinda threw it up there as quickly as I could.

The short answer to your question is yes - I can do an adhoc staging environment (that was what all the work went toward).

The longer answer is a bit more complicated.

An "environment" consists of three parts (more, but I'll keep it simple)

• The application
• The "assets"
• The database

These are all separate entities.

So the way we had the staging environment before was that we had separate Applications and Databases but the same assets.

This created a problem because:

1) The staging database would get stale - meaning it would have data in it that was 3 months old or older 2) If the staging application removed an asset during testing, the asset was gone for production (Because they shared the same assets)

Solving these problems is not easy. We could SHARE the database across staging and production but then if the application removes or adds something to staging, the same thing happens on production.

If we DONT share the assets, we have to maintain separate copy of all the assets, which is about 10 GBs worth of photos and that adds a non-significant cost to maintain and sync those.

So for like a redesign, I would say, we spin up the staging site with it's own database and shared assets - just like we did before.

However, while that works fine for a redesign, it doesn't work for the testing of adding a single page. Because adding the page to staging would then add it to staging as well.

That said, we can definitely keep a page hidden on production so we can create the new page on production and keep it hidden so you can review it before we link it up and make it live.

On Wed, May 31, 2017 at 2:36 PM, johnsisland notifications@github.com wrote:

No, it's not related to any of the recent "issues". More about how we could've designed & tested the video page first, or how future new pages or redesigns/updates will work before launching live.

Is it possible to just add or activate a testing environment when needed?

— You are receiving this because you were assigned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/gunnertech/jire2/issues/280#issuecomment-305278219, or mute the thread https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAR4OxVi6GPo24PMzKxXmcBHzHEyy2zOks5r_bM7gaJpZM4Nr3mT .

-- Cody Swann - CEO, Gunner Technology T: 213.915.4083 | cody@gunnertech.com | www.gunnertech.com http://www.gunnertech.com/Skype: cody.swann

CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: This email message, together with any documents, files and/or email messages attached to it, is intended for the sole use of the individual or entity to whom it is addressed, and may contain information that is legally privileged, confidential and restricted from disclosure. If you are not the intended recipient, or responsible for delivery to that person, you are hereby notified that any dissemination or copying of this communication is STRICTLY PROHIBITED. In such case please notify the sender by reply email and delete this message without reading, printing or saving.

[CodySwannGT]

Per discussion: We have the ability to create an ad hoc staging environment, which is good enough for our current testing needs