A gentle introduction to Drupal site deployment best practices, from the Do It With Drupal conference.

1. Deployment
The darkest of the Drupal arts

2. Moving stuff
to your live site

3. Moving stuff
to your live site
(And living to tell about it)

4. Deployment’s
Five Commandments

5. Thou Shalt Use
Source Control
You will always collide with “The Other Guy”
You will always need to undo something

6. Thou Shalt Smack
Anyone Who Doesn’t
It’s not really source control if Bob
keeps changing things via FTP

7. Thou Shalt Use Code
Whenever Possible
Code lives in source control
Code is safer than the database

8. Thou Shalt
Test Thy Changes
It always works just fine on your laptop

9. Thou Shalt
Document
You will always be on vacation
when the really big emergency happens

10. The Launch

11. Dev laptop
cvs.drupal.org
SVN server
Live server

16. What’s in SVN?
public_html
assets
db_snapshots

17. What’s in SVN?
public_html
assets
db_snapshots

18. What’s in SVN?
public_html
sites
assets www.mysite.com
files
db_snapshots

19. What’s in SVN?
public_html
sites
assets www.mysite.com
files
db_snapshots

20. The magic of symlinks
VERSION_1
public_html VERSION_2

21. The magic of symlinks
VERSION_1
public_html VERSION_2
VERSION_3

22. Fixin’ Bugs,
Addin’ Features

23. Dev laptop
SVN server
Live server

24. Dev laptop
SVN server Test server
Live server

25. Dev laptop
SVN server Test server
Live server db_snapshots

26. Dev laptop
SVN server Test server
Live server db_snapshots

27. Test, Test, Test

28. Test

29. Then Test

30. Wipe the database
then test again

31. Dev laptop
SVN server Test server
Live server db_snapshots

32. Don’t hack live

33. Configuration
Changes

34. Export your Views

35. Export your Views
your_module.views_defaults.inc
hook_views_default_views()

36. Use update.php!

37. Use update.php!

39. simpletest.install

40. http://api.drupal.org/api/function/hook_update_N

41. Use helper functions,
not interns

42. Use helper functions,
not interns
CCK fields

43. Use helper functions,
not interns
CCK fields
Imagecache presets

44. Use helper functions,
not interns
CCK fields
Imagecache presets
Rules configuration

45. Use helper functions,
not interns
CCK fields
Imagecache presets
Rules configuration
Menu items

46. Use helper functions,
not interns
CCK fields
Imagecache presets
Rules configuration
Menu items
Taxonomy terms…

47. Use helper functions,
not interns
CCK fields
Imagecache presets
Rules configuration
Menu items
Taxonomy terms…
Install Profile API

48. Devel module

49. Wipe the database
then test

50. Test, Test, Test

51. Test

52. Then Test

53. Syncing Content

54. e ID 259
Nod
ALSO Node ID 259

55. Nodes my way
by the Psychedelic Furs

56. Nodes my way, Part 2
by the Psychedelic Furs

57. Nodes my way, Epilogue
by the Psychedelic Furs
http://drupal.org/project/export_node

58. Yeah, but...

59. Don’t syncronize
content.

60. Don’t syncronize
content.
Feed API
Publish and Subscribe
Aggregator
Import/Export...

61. Workflow
Moderation
Drafts
Editor Roles

62. No Magic Bullets

63. No Magic Bullets
• Figure out your organization

64. No Magic Bullets
• Figure out your organization
• Find matching tools

65. No Magic Bullets
• Figure out your organization
• Find matching tools
• Roll your own

66. No Magic Bullets
• Figure out your organization
• Find matching tools
• Roll your own
• Document! Document! Document!

67. Tools to watch
• Drush (do Drupal stuff from the command line)
http://drupal.org/project/drush
• Install Profile API (helper code for updates)
http://drupal.org/project/install_profile_api
• Patterns (save site configuration in XML)
http://drupal.org/project/patterns
• Deployment (push site changes via XMLRPC)
http://drupal.org/project/deploy
• Aegir (manage multiple sites from one UI)
http://groups.drupal.org/aegir-hosting-system