If I want to install umbraco into a new database, so that I can use one for developing and one for live, shouldn't it be enough to just change the connectionstring in the web.config and then the installation wizard would show up next time I run the site? When I try to do that I get stuck at the install page with the loading bar at the bottom making no progress at all and no wizard showing up.
Installing against two db's probably wont work this way.
when you install umbraco, it also writes some settings to the web.config - so if you change the connection string, it thinks it's already setup some stuff and doesn't do the full install..
you would be better off either doing a second full install for dev, or cloning the db.
However if you want to flip between dev / live dbs' you are going to need to do a bit more than change the connection string.
Umbraco stores something on disk (like templates, views and stylesheets) and other things in the DB (like doctypes, content, and templates). You need to keep all bits in sync if you want to swap between them.
you can do this manually, you will need to know what settings you have changed/added.
but there are a couple of tools that can help you do this
uSync (disclaimer i wrote it) was developed to help with this, it saves the db config bits (like doctypes) to disk and then will re-import them at the other end from disk to db - it's very much a dev tool, so how you control the files on disk (i.e source control) is down to you.
Courier is the umbraco tool to keep sites in sync, it will also do those bits it's a bit more editor focused so it does things like allowing you to push things between sites as part of the content process.
Either way for both of these tools (or if you did your own cloning), you would just install two versions of umbraco and then have config going from dev to live, as part of your release processed.
Installing Umbraco on multiple databases
If I want to install umbraco into a new database, so that I can use one for developing and one for live, shouldn't it be enough to just change the connectionstring in the web.config and then the installation wizard would show up next time I run the site? When I try to do that I get stuck at the install page with the loading bar at the bottom making no progress at all and no wizard showing up.
Hi
Installing against two db's probably wont work this way.
when you install umbraco, it also writes some settings to the web.config - so if you change the connection string, it thinks it's already setup some stuff and doesn't do the full install..
you would be better off either doing a second full install for dev, or cloning the db.
However if you want to flip between dev / live dbs' you are going to need to do a bit more than change the connection string.
Umbraco stores something on disk (like templates, views and stylesheets) and other things in the DB (like doctypes, content, and templates). You need to keep all bits in sync if you want to swap between them.
you can do this manually, you will need to know what settings you have changed/added.
but there are a couple of tools that can help you do this
uSync (disclaimer i wrote it) was developed to help with this, it saves the db config bits (like doctypes) to disk and then will re-import them at the other end from disk to db - it's very much a dev tool, so how you control the files on disk (i.e source control) is down to you.
Courier is the umbraco tool to keep sites in sync, it will also do those bits it's a bit more editor focused so it does things like allowing you to push things between sites as part of the content process.
Either way for both of these tools (or if you did your own cloning), you would just install two versions of umbraco and then have config going from dev to live, as part of your release processed.
Thank you very much for your help. I actually am trying to use uSync to keep everything in sync so hopefully I'll get it to work now
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