I need to see if Courier 2 will work for a client to address a specific need.
They have a mixed CMS and development approach to changes. The CMS changes are done direct on a live environment (and sometime involve items on the filesystem, not just the database) whereas the development changes are first progressed through a test environment. In conjunction with a brief CMS change freeze, the idea is we could use Courier to 'sync back' CMS changes from live to test prior to deploying a development change to be able to test any potential issues before to making them live.
I have heard you can install Courier as a trial version on a local machine (i.e. with the websites on the same machine) - and I could test this theory out / devise a way of working that would achieve the objective. However, despite some digging I cannot find a link to a trial version of Courier to evaluate, only a paid-for option.
- Could someone point me to a link for a trial version on Courier?
- On a wider note - has anyone else resolved the issue of mixed CMS and development changes? Having a content freeze for the entirety of the development unfortunately is not an option.
Umbraco is not unique in providing multiple ways to achieve the same result so i'll go quickly through our workflow and hopefully it will help influence your decision.
Generally our development strategy is broken into the following....
1. Servicing the Umbraco build
This includes keeping on top of minor patch releases, major version upgrades and ensuring continued package extension compatibility during the upgrade process. We do this on a local build first, complete our testing on a staging node if necessary and finally freeze the production CMS from editors for the time it takes to deploy the updates.
2. Maintaining our existing codebase.
We use Team Foundation Server, and check in the following code...
a) C# code which call Umbraco APIs, for example; Examine based content searching and media protection with membership accounts. b) Razor templates c) CSS d) JavaScript e) Re-usable XSLT modules f) Partial views (replaces old user-controls)
Every so often a content editor will highlight a specific bug in our template code, these are fixed as they arise but in general we can deploy our entire codebase without needing to freeze the CMS at all.
This leaves changes you need to make to document types, media types, content types (data types), dictionary items & macros (if you still use them). If your site has been well defined from the start you should rarely need to change these, but it does crop up from time to time. All of these items are stored within the Umbraco database so you will have sync issues if you maintain development, staging and production servers. In the past we've manually created these from one environment to the next by logging into the backoffice, but this is labour intensive and of course prone to error.
You have two options if you want automated or "easy" sync of these types; Courier and uSync.
Both have their plus points, though through bitter personal experience we've since dropped using Courier 2 altogether. We will be taking a serious look at uSync once it's working in Umbraco 7.1. uSync is well worth a look if you use a source control system as it creates files you can check-in.
Thank you for your response. The client wants to maintain direct in live and has pretty much ruled out making CMS changes via each environment, and we also do not know the 'limit' of what they wish to change, so thinking worst case, we would need some sort of synchronisation to prevent development changes potentially breaking or overwriting something.
You have been very helpful already, but do you know how I can install a trial version of Courier? I only see paid for options via the Umbraco website.
There's currently no working version for Umbraco 7.
You will almost certainly find it useful for transferring types (as long as it doesnt crash). But don't ever attempt to transfer content with it, it's awful!
Courier 2 trial
I need to see if Courier 2 will work for a client to address a specific need.
They have a mixed CMS and development approach to changes. The CMS changes are done direct on a live environment (and sometime involve items on the filesystem, not just the database) whereas the development changes are first progressed through a test environment. In conjunction with a brief CMS change freeze, the idea is we could use Courier to 'sync back' CMS changes from live to test prior to deploying a development change to be able to test any potential issues before to making them live.
I have heard you can install Courier as a trial version on a local machine (i.e. with the websites on the same machine) - and I could test this theory out / devise a way of working that would achieve the objective. However, despite some digging I cannot find a link to a trial version of Courier to evaluate, only a paid-for option.
- Could someone point me to a link for a trial version on Courier?
- On a wider note - has anyone else resolved the issue of mixed CMS and development changes? Having a content freeze for the entirety of the development unfortunately is not an option.
Thanks,
Mark
Hi Mark
Umbraco is not unique in providing multiple ways to achieve the same result so i'll go quickly through our workflow and hopefully it will help influence your decision.
Generally our development strategy is broken into the following....
1. Servicing the Umbraco build
This includes keeping on top of minor patch releases, major version upgrades and ensuring continued package extension compatibility during the upgrade process. We do this on a local build first, complete our testing on a staging node if necessary and finally freeze the production CMS from editors for the time it takes to deploy the updates.
2. Maintaining our existing codebase.
We use Team Foundation Server, and check in the following code...
a) C# code which call Umbraco APIs, for example; Examine based content searching and media protection with membership accounts.
b) Razor templates
c) CSS
d) JavaScript
e) Re-usable XSLT modules
f) Partial views (replaces old user-controls)
Every so often a content editor will highlight a specific bug in our template code, these are fixed as they arise but in general we can deploy our entire codebase without needing to freeze the CMS at all.
This leaves changes you need to make to document types, media types, content types (data types), dictionary items & macros (if you still use them). If your site has been well defined from the start you should rarely need to change these, but it does crop up from time to time. All of these items are stored within the Umbraco database so you will have sync issues if you maintain development, staging and production servers. In the past we've manually created these from one environment to the next by logging into the backoffice, but this is labour intensive and of course prone to error.
You have two options if you want automated or "easy" sync of these types; Courier and uSync.
Both have their plus points, though through bitter personal experience we've since dropped using Courier 2 altogether. We will be taking a serious look at uSync once it's working in Umbraco 7.1. uSync is well worth a look if you use a source control system as it creates files you can check-in.
Regards
Martin
Hi Martin,
Thank you for your response. The client wants to maintain direct in live and has pretty much ruled out making CMS changes via each environment, and we also do not know the 'limit' of what they wish to change, so thinking worst case, we would need some sort of synchronisation to prevent development changes potentially breaking or overwriting something.
You have been very helpful already, but do you know how I can install a trial version of Courier? I only see paid for options via the Umbraco website.
Thanks,
Mark
Hi Mark
You can download a nightly from here http://nightly.umbraco.org/UmbracoCourier/2.7.8/nightly%20builds/ as long as you run localhost it will work without a licence key.
There's currently no working version for Umbraco 7.
You will almost certainly find it useful for transferring types (as long as it doesnt crash). But don't ever attempt to transfer content with it, it's awful!
Martin.
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