We are deploying sharepoint MOSS 2007 at our work. I’m trying to come up with a sharepoint development and deployment methodology. We have Dev/QA/Prod environments and I need a way, preferably automated to deploy changes from Dev to QA and from there to prod.
We are creating site collections web parts etc. Some of it is done directly within sharepoint, some through Sharepoint designer or visual studio. I’m looking for a way to extract this and deploy it to other enviornments.
I tried stsadm backup/restore import/export etc but they all move the data along with it as well. I just need the structure deployed. Content deployment paths and jobs does the same thing as well.
We use MSBuild & Curisecontrol.net for other .net projects to automate build/deployment process. I’m looking for something similar with sharepoint if possible.
What are your best practices for this? Since my team is learning we don’t have a defined process and we are open to change our development process if needed.
First off, it’s a hard problem.
Probably the ‘best’ method is to put everything into solution packages – but its quite hard to do correctly.
There is a lot of opinions out there – the best I can do is give you further reading
SharePoint Solution Deployment Strategies
SO – How do you deploy your SharePoint solutions?
ROSS – A commercial toolset to help with deployment
DocAve Deployment Manager