Question

When i’ve worked on Drupal sites before, if there is internal access to the server, or if remote desktop access is available, i’ve always developed it on the machine it would be ran from when live, and just not made it public on the server.

However, what is the best thing to do if you don’t have access to the server yet, for example if the client hasn’t got anything in place?

I need to be able to build and test the solution on my local machine, or on my VPS which I have RDP access to, and be able to move it over with as much ease as possible to the clients server when ready.

Any tips or best practices? As far as i’m aware Drupal doesn’t have any specific migration tools? I could be wrong though

Answer 1

I typically develop on my local machine and then upload to server once complete.

All you need to do is change the folder name in /sites/ and change the settings.php file to reflect the server settings/domain.

Something you should be aware of:

• If you are uploading files on your local installation, the file paths will be wrong on the server and you will need to execute a one off mysql replace query.
• Make sure you use relative paths in any hard coded links.