Infrastructure » Website

The last release process showed that working directly on the online version of our website is not comfortable:

• we have to change all the pages in the shortest possible time
• changes cannot be tested quietly, particularly Spip updates
• a new website design cannot be tested either

To avoid working in a hurry, we need a work copy of the website on which translators, web designers and sysadmins would work. A first option is to set a second Spip instance but this would bring several weaknesses:

• users from one Spip should be sync'ed in the second one
• pages cannot be transfered easily when the work copy becomes official (it's databases)
• the same applies for squelettes, scripts, etc.
• we have 2 Spips + plugins to maintain

So this option does not seem to be a good solution and we prefer the second one: mirroring Spip pages as static Html pages. Additionally this should speed up our website response.

The only drawback is that, when mirroring is disabled because the work copy is under heavy work, it is not possible to publish news on the official website. As a result the mirroring tool should provide 2 mirroring modes:

1. whole site ? the usual way to mirror the copy onto the official website

1. news only ? propagate news only from the work copy to the official website

Of course we can start with the first mode only then evaluate the difficulty to implement the second one.