Depending on the preferences of the individual developers this may include one or several
machines. Different configurations of development machines may also have the advantage of showing up bugs
that may otherwise have been missed.
Staging Like a dress rehearsal, this stage should mimic the final production as closely as possible. No development takes
place on this server so any changes still need to be done on the development server and moved across to
staging. This version is accessible only by the development team and anyone else concerned with moderating the
release of the application.
Production This is the live public performance, accessible via the internet. No development takes place on this server as it
would not only potentially break a live site but also the chain of quality control.
It's worth stressing that what is "best practice" is dependent on the requirements of the team and the
project. Each stage can add extra administration that could stretch the resources of small teams and add to the
complexity of low budget projects. Blindly following suggestions of the ideal development environment will
be of little consolation when a project is delayed due to internal reasons. Keeping that in mind we'll work
through an example based on how we worked with some of the code for this book and urge you to take from it
what you see as relevant to your particular needs.
Pages:
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277