[Testing] Checklist for taking a site from development to live server, and the importance of Documenting
Deploying a site from dev to live is a process that has to be done carefully especially sites where financial information is being handled such as shopping cart. From a testers point of view these are the basic things to be taken care of like user accounts debug code or even a permission change that have been pushed to the dev site.
- All test data has been taken out.
- All development modules have been disabled.
- All test user accounts have been deleted.
- All test configuration has been taken out.
Even though this is a very small list there are many things that need to be taken care of before this can happen.
1. All test data has been taken out.
We need to have a list of whatever test data is being entered into the site. To make things easier during deployment phase this list has to be properly documented.
2. All development modules have been disabled.
Before this can happen a tester has to know what all are the deployment modules (for eg: the devel module is one popular deployment module that is part of most Drupal development efforts). For this to happen the tester should have a list of modules being used on the site and the information about whether each of them need to be present on the live site.
3. All test user accounts have been deleted.
For this every tester should keep and maintain a well documented list that he/ she is creating for test purpose.
4. All test configuration has been taken out.
Testing group should work out with developers as to what all configurations are being made on the site, whether each of those are applicable to live site.
For this to happen, documenting each and every step of configuration has to be documented right from the policy level.
Essentially all the above can be reduced to one sentence: Document each and every thing that you do.
