I have a DEV environment setup with wordpress installed, where I have a wordpress developer working every day. I don’t feel comfortable every time he changes something in the environment because there’s no way of tracking the changes he’s doing, so in the case there’s an error o we want to go back 3 days for example there’s no way for me to do that.
I’ve thought about the different solutions to this problem and the only solution I have thought of is, running a cronjob every day trying to see if there are any changes in the filesystem (e.g. new files were uploaded) then check them in. I thought about this approach but I don’t think that would be effective for the database part, there would be no way for me to see if there are any new changes in the database, so I will have to commit the database every day and my SCM will be full of commits making it no that effective.
I wanted to ask the community how they have solved this problem or maybe using different techniques. Thank you!
Generally, there are two sets of data you want to control with WordPress:
So, in theory, you can do it all by hand copying your filesystem and database every day. Now, let’s go to the tools you may want to check to make this faster, I will focus on three of them so you can choose from some tools/systems.
Revisr (Hard)
Revisr is a WordPress version control plugin which helps you manage your WordPress files and database from your dashboard. You should know Git before you can fully use this plugin, you can learn more from it following this guide.
VersionPress (Medium)
VersionPress helps you track all changes in WordPress. Unlike Revisr it doesn’t require you to make commits, since it does so after every change. For example, when you create a page or install a new plugin, VersionPress tracks it. For every change that it documents, VersionPress gives you an option to either undo an action without affecting other actions or roll back to the stage before you performed the action.
WPEngine backups
This is not a plugin but a hosting company that offers a solid backup/restore solution.
I am WordPress freelancer and I have worked with plenty of different hosting companies, from all I have used, WPEngine has the better backup/restore system, it’s pretty straightforward, you can set it up to take backups hourly and you can restore then really fast.
The only downside is the price, if you are in a tight budget you might want to do it yourself, WPEngine won’t help you to see what your developer changed but that can be easily done with Stream, the really important thing here is how you can go back to a certain state with no real effort.
