Create staging environments for Joomla

Hi Steve,

It is not possible to change the default directory that StageIt makes the copy of your Joomla site in. It would be a neat feature to add down the road (ie. in a subdomain), so I will make a note of that.

One of the issues of having it in a subfolder of the actual Joomla site is that when backing up your site with akeeba backup, it will also backup the /stageit folder - making the backups double in size

To compensate for this, you can set akeeba (even in the free akeeba) to exclude the /stageit folder. At the same time, if you have pushed to live a stageit copy and you have StageIt setup to backup before doing so, you also want to exclude the "stgbackups" folder as well.

Thanks for using StageIt hope that helps!

Hi Carlos,

Tim Davis here helping with support.

You cannot use Stageit to do that.

However, I am wondering if you can accomplish what you want simply by leaving your new, but unready content, unpublished using the Joomla core.

If you are wondering more about that, send me an email through [email protected] and let's talk some more.

God bless,

Tim

Hi Agassi,

StageIt currently works in Joomla 5 so long as you have the J5 "Behaviour - Backward Compatibility" plugin enabled. We're working on the J5 Core compatible version.

God bless,

Tim

Hi Agassi,

StageIt is now certified for Joomla! 5.

Have a great day!

Hi Pieter,

Here is a video showing you how to remove MigrateMe 4 after you push your test migration to live:

https://cybersalt.com/migrateme-4/how-to-remove-your-joomla-4-test-migration-area-and-uninstall-migrateme-4

God bless,

tim

HI Scott,

I tested Stageit on a J5 site today and it worked fine, so I think you login issue might be something else.

Let's continue this conversation by email ([email protected]) so you can share more specific things such as screeshots or logins to help you sort out what is going on.

God bless,

Tim

Hi Eric,

I'm happy to hear (and not surprised ;-)) StageIt worked perfectly.

I have seen some sites where removing the staging area wen very slowly. To speed it up you can delete the "stageit" folder in the root install of you Joomla site via the file manager of your webhosting account.

BTW, if you ware willing it would be greatly appreciated if you left a review of Stageit on the JED - https://extensions.joomla.org/extension/stageit/

God bless,

Tim

Hi Helmut, It's best to email me at [email protected] where we can discuss things in more detail.

However, to skip the next step I would give you there, I am happy to log in and take a quick look at your site.

You can send me your super user login details and admin login url through this form:https://cybersalt.com/services/consultation-request-form

You will notice that form is not on the PWD site. This link explores my role in PWD support:

https://cybersalt.com/net-shaker/cybersalt-is-managing-support-for-php-web-design

Hi Julie,

Tim Davis here, helping with support.

I would be happy to log into your site and take a look at what is going on.

Please email me at [email protected] and let's move forward there.

God bless,

Tim

Thanks for asking!

Here is the latest changelog:

=== CHANGELOG ===
Version 4.1.1
Date: 15th May 2023
Minor fixes

Version 4.1.0
Date: 21-03-2023
Joomla 4.x compatbiility improved
Plugin position changed slightly

Version 4.0.3
Date: 09-11-2022
Additional Akeeba compatibility

Version 4.0.2.1
Date: 13-10-2021
Added backwards compatibility for older versions of Joomla 3.x

Version 4.0.2
Date: 01-10-2021
Improved speed for removing backups

Version 4.0.1
Date: 01-09-2021
Minor bug fix with checking POST size

Version 4.0.0
Date: 19-08-2021
Fully compatible with Joomla 4.0.0 stable

Version 2.1.12
Date: 04-09-2020
Fixed issue with ACL

Version 2.1.11
Date: 04-01-2018
Fixed bug with excluding directories from initial deployment

Version 2.1.10
Date: 12-12-2018
Improved speed and memory usage

Version 2.1.8
Date: 04-12-2018
Refined the Remove Staging function with better feedback and functionality

Version 2.1.8
Date: 04-12-2018
Refined the Remove Staging function with better feedback and functionality

Version 2.1.7
Date: 29-11-2018
Added RecursiveDirectoryIterator for faster, more reliable file search

Version 2.1.6
Date: 27-11-2018
Added fix for where glob() function is not available

Version 2.1.5
Date: 28-05-2018
Added error logging where database tables can not be read for various reasons

Version 2.1.4
Date: 28-05-2018
Fixed a bug where part of Staging deployment was skipped

Version 2.1.3
Date: 22-05-2018
Added user access permissions so you can define which user groups can use StageIt

Version 2.1.2
Date: 25-04-2018
Added further feedback during deployment phase

Version 2.1.1
Date: 20-04-2018
Fixed a minor bug

Hi just made my own site getting toto know the rope

Thank you, goodness this is a smart website nvm a smart phone when you got a website like this hoooooraaaa i love it best birthday gift tyty

As we discuss before now the Joomla ACL fix is there for doing the concept of having other Joomla devs to your site.. see here https://github.com/joomla/joomla-cms/pull/41262 will be subscriber again when this will be implemented and useful to have ACL access to different site Joomla devs on the site that can not interfere with other Joomla devs components.

Hi Scott - doesn't it seem like things always happen on the always the most important one! when you say the css is missing, is that in the back end only, the front end only, or both? If you can send some screenshots to [email protected] (or even superuser login info and the url) I will take a look and see if I recognize the issue.

Hi Tim,
The staging administrator or backend is has a bunch of net::ERR_CONTENT_DECODING_FAILED 200 tied to CSS files. There are a couple of staging front end modules that are not working with jquery errors and missing CSS. But most of the template and content is not affected like the backend area.

One question, is the latest version 4.0.3 or 4.0.2? Joomla extension site lists 4.0.3. When I downloaded the latest, it reads 4.0.2 in the extension mgr area.

Hi Scott,

In the configuration for StageIt, do you have "Force Refresh" set to "Yes"? If not, change that setting and try making a staging area again.

Regarding the version numbers, the latest StageIt package shows as 4.1 in the Joomla extension manager, but the component shows as 4.0.2. I will touch base Barnaby about making sure the Joomla Extension Directory info gets update. BTW, there have been no recent changes or updates that are related to this 200 error issue, so I don't think that is aversion issue.

Hi Erwin,

Since this is happening only some of the time there must be something that is happening only under certain circumstances.

When this happens are the log and cache paths also staying with their "stageit" paths entered?

Also, in the Stageit settings, do you have the "Force Refresh" setting set to "Yes - refresh and rebuild all files and data tables"?

I also wonder if some caching setup or tool you use is monkeying around with things when you push to live, but just typing that makes me wonder how that could be.

Keep me posted on what you try/find as this might help should anyone has this issue in the future.

Hello
I have tried again. The StageIt plugin was not activated. Now it went completely over the stage. Sorry. . .

No worries - I'm glad you got it sorted out!

Hi Melanie,

I would be happy to look into this for you. Would you please email the superuser login info for your site and you webhosting account? [email protected]

God bless,

Tim

Hi Gareth,

Something that is active in your install is not J4 compatible.

If you email me a super user login for your site (and the url) and a log in for your webhosting account I will take a quick look for you. [email protected]

God bless,

Tim

Hi Aaron,

StageIt is working on the latest version of J4. That said, I don't doubt you have run into something that isn't working for you and I would like to look into that to help understand why.

Would you mind emailing ([email protected]) the url of your site and superuser credentials for accessing your site admin so I can log in and run stageit on it and have a look? Any description of what I am looking for would be helpful too.

Thanks!

Tim

Hi Bob. If the StageIt extension is still installed you can use it to remove the staging area which will remove all tables beginning with "stg_" and the "/stageit" folder after that you want to manually remove the "/stgbackups" folder (if it exists.)

If the StageIt extension has been uninstalled you will want to manually remove:

- any DB table beginning with the prefix "stg_"
- the "/stageit" folder
- the "/stgbackups" folder

Tim

We did just update the StageIt version info in the Joomla Extensions Directory, but there haven't been any changes since November 11, 2022 (the thing just runs so good!)

That change was to have StageIt *not* copy Akeeba Backup Files that end in .j## (the "##" being any number between 01 and 99.) Previous to this minor change, Stageit only skipped Akeeba Backup Files that ended in .jpa

The StageIt changelog is actually in the extension download package, but just for fun, here it is:

=== CHANGELOG ===
Version 4.0.3
Date: 09-11-2022
Additional Akeeba compatibility

Version 4.0.2.1
Date: 13-10-2021
Added backwards compatibility for older versions of Joomla 3.x

Version 4.0.2
Date: 01-10-2021
Improved speed for removing backups

Version 4.0.1
Date: 01-09-2021
Minor bug fix with checking POST size

Version 4.0.0
Date: 19-08-2021
Fully compatible with Joomla 4.0.0 stable

Version 2.1.12
Date: 04-09-2020
Fixed issue with ACL

Version 2.1.11
Date: 04-01-2018
Fixed bug with excluding directories from initial deployment

Version 2.1.10
Date: 12-12-2018
Improved speed and memory usage

Version 2.1.8
Date: 04-12-2018
Refined the Remove Staging function with better feedback and functionality

Version 2.1.8
Date: 04-12-2018
Refined the Remove Staging function with better feedback and functionality

Version 2.1.7
Date: 29-11-2018
Added RecursiveDirectoryIterator for faster, more reliable file search

Version 2.1.6
Date: 27-11-2018
Added fix for where glob() function is not available

Version 2.1.5
Date: 28-05-2018
Added error logging where database tables can not be read for various reasons

Version 2.1.4
Date: 28-05-2018
Fixed a bug where part of Staging deployment was skipped

Version 2.1.3
Date: 22-05-2018
Added user access permissions so you can define which user groups can use StageIt

Version 2.1.2
Date: 25-04-2018
Added further feedback during deployment phase

Version 2.1.1
Date: 20-04-2018
Fixed a minor bug

What would nice to have is if you could have set up different ”pre” stage copies for different devs access (with Joomla ACL) for different devs Joomla components.

So what that means is the each developer can only login to the site and only have access to their special StageIT area for their specific component.

When they then do testing and everything work they can push the update for the live site and then the only thing that is affected is there update for just their component.

Could that be a new feature enhancement for StageIT?

I like that idea a lot! Though, just thinking of how it would work and how much hosting space some sites would take up makes my head spin (though we all know I am a support guy and not a programmer.)

There are currently no plans to add any major features to any of our extensions. Maintaining them and keeping them running on Joomla (as Joomla version change) is all good, but Barnaby has some other projects he is committed to outside of Joomla that require the lion's share of his focus and energy.

That's why everyone had ended up talking to a dud (or should that be "dude") like me, lol!

Good bcs now with latest bug of ACL who can configure that solve a great problem too :) https://issues.joomla.org/tracker/joomla-cms/39706

Interesting. I t looks like a fix is going to come along soon for that one.

Did you come any further with this feature suggestion? I think it would be very great and also if you can have another domain test site and then remotely also update the main domain site with one component and its dependencies..
cheers!

No, there are still no plans for major feature additions - that that idea would be a whopper to add! There is so much overlap between some components that different people would be tripping all over each other. For instance, if extension A and extension B both access user profiles, and let's say custom fields, and make changes to settings and other things, stuff would be breaking all over the place. The solution would be to lock out one developer at a time, which basically is what you already have with only have one staging area.

OK thats a pity bcs this should be the solution for doing this https://github.com/joomla/joomla-cms/pull/39879

Hello,

Yes this is by design - it won't create /yourrandomfolder for the staging environment - most additional third party folders that are actually *needed* will be in (say) /media , and this avoids copying /copyofbackup1 etc.

After the initial deployment, you usually won't need to redeploy the staging environment, so just copy any third party folder that you really do need manually to /stageit/

Then , make your changes in /stageit/yourfolder/ and any changes made will be copied BACK to the live folder when you sync with live.

The workflow is usually:

Live >> Deploy to Staging
Staging >> Make changes & test
Staging >> Sync changes to live
Staging >> Keep making changes and syncing to live

i.e. you don't normally need to redeploy the staging to the live.

So normally you also won't need to recreate your third party folder in the staging environment. The only time you *would* need to is if you've completely removed and rebuilt your staging environment, or if you've had changes in your live /randomfolder

Best wishes - Barnaby

Good morning John Doe :-)

StageIt is a full site staging environment, it doesn't allow for selected items to be published or unpublished.

Best wishes

Hi David,

Q1 - StageIt uses the subfolder /stageit/ , it doesn't work on a subdomain.

Q2 - Yes although it's not built for this - if you want a specific Joomla 4.x migration tool I'd suggest MigrateMe 4. This has many inbuilt tools and functions to ensure the migration is seamless, and offers additional backward checks to ensure the data structures are correct. There's also a 'safe-mode' function, so if you migrate and something goes wrong (e.g. a whitescreen is caused by an incompatible extension) use safe-mode to ensure you have a useable J4 environment, and you can then install the latest J4 version of the outdated extensions.

Best wishes - Barnaby

Hi Scott

That's an index issue, in the database (?) not sure which table. It'd be worth checking which index is throwing the error, if you check the database structure in PHPMyAdmin for that table, it will show indexes... you'd be looking for a compound unique index e.g. category_id & article_id . This won't be related to StageIt, which is entirely 'inert' while not being used, my guess is it's something in the database configuration.

Never mind, I disabled all Akeeba Backup plugins in staging and then pushed the changes to production. I was able to log into production. Next, I reinstalled the backup component in production, reenabled plugins, and then updated staging. Works fine now.

Thanks for the update!

Hi Karen

Technically that'd work fine - but with StageIt is that you'll need to use the Force Refresh option when you Sync with Live, to ensure all the old J3 caches are updated.

StageIt doesn't include any error checking or database updates, and doesn't verify the J3 environment... so for a more comprehensive option use MigrateMe 4, which has 1000s of checks, and the ability to load a working J4 environment, even with major compatibility issues or a blank J4 screen etc.

Hope that helps

Hi Marco

Please open a support ticket through https://www.php-web-design.com/Barnaby-Dixon.html and include the website you're looking at, and I'll check it out for you.

Did you put the RewriteBase in the /stageit/.htaccess file ?

Thanks!

Hello Barnaby
thx for your fast answer :)
i saw i made a big mistake. I wrote /steageit/ in url instead of /stageit/ and copy/pasted this url the whole time. Didn't recognize this typo because also with this wrong url i landed on login site.
Now when i found this mistake and type the url the right way, it seems to work, together with the .htaccess thing.
Regards
Marco

Thanks for the update!

Hello,

Those extensions do not play nice with the Joomla core, and override it in places, so they are in conflict with the StageIt plugin. Just change the plugin behaviour in StageIt > Configuration > Environment > [set to Backend only]

Best regards

I tried your configuration and did not work. Any other ideas to try it out?

Thanks!

Hi Ivan,

Disabling the plugin in the frontend through the StageIt configuration will prevent it from displaying. If this didn't work, try clearing your cache.

If you do need further assistance with this please contact support through the Contact page. Thanks!

Hello

StageIt is designed to operate as a single live staging setup. It's not designed to work as test staging live ... since this would make the average system overly complex and make it unclear which environment is the 'master' leading inevitably to unintentional overwrites

Kind regards

Good morning Karen,

Sorry to hear you've hit some issues. I think this is likely down to a cache, try clearing your Joomla and template caches, and see if that helps.

If not, please open a support ticket by clicking Contact Support and I can help further.

Thanks & have a great day! Barnaby

Hi Karen and Barnaby hope this issue is fixed now with new release? I will also use StageIT with Joomla 4 and Helix Ultimate latest versions..

Cheers!

Hello! Yes it was all very simple to resolve - I just reinstalled the latest version of StageIt, and all is working well.

Regards

Ok great. Do you use php 8 too? I have a site with php 8.0.13 and hope it work with latest php version there. I guess also next Jommla 4 version have support for php 8.1..

cheers!

We'll continue to update to meet latest standards - just a question of time as always :-)

Hi there Karen,

Thank you for reaching out! I found a little issue where backups would delete, just very slowly. Please install the latest version of StageIt (4.0.2) which has this bug resolved.

Cheers

Hello,

That doesn't sound like a problem with StageIt, more likely a problem with Akeeba / Joomla, since it was triggered when saving an Akeeba / Joomla setting.

But if you can send me a screenshot I'm happy to check for you?

Cheers!

Hello

StageIt will be released for Joomla 4.x in the next few days.

Kind regards

Just to confirm, StageIt is now fully Joomla 4.x compatible.

Hi Paul

Thank you for your message. You can do this in a variety of ways.

The best way is through .htaccess - enable this on your staging environment, and exclude traffic except from your own IP address with the following code:

order deny,allow
deny from all
allow from <Your IP Address>

Note: the .htaccess is *not* deployed to live, so this change will not affect your live site during any sync.

Alternatively you can do this through staging environment Joomla admin - in System > Global Configuration > Site set the site to offline. This will require you to log in as an admin to see the site frontend.

Have a great day! Barnaby Dixon

Hi there

Thank you for your message. Joomla 4 will be a major change, so since it's not yet released it's impossible to say with certainty that StageIt will work perfectly. However, it's been developed to the latest available standards, so it should work - just can't guarantee just yet!

Have a great day

Hi Petro,

The Joomla system is complex and interdependent, so there aren't many changes that can be made without impacting the whole system due to internal UUIDs and the asset system.

It's not possible to make individual, granular changes such as pushing a single article edit to the live site. That would introduce too much potential for data inconsistency due to Joomla's internal asset system.

So with StageIt, it's by default an all-or-nothing system. You deploy the staging environment, which is an exact replica of the live system.

Then you make changes on the staging environment.

Then you push changes to live. It will check all files and folders for changes, as well as all data changes, and if it finds a change on either the live or the staging, it will push the staging version to the live site. This maintains data consistency.

With the enterprise version, you can opt to exclude specific files, folders and data tables from the sync. This is so that you can push staging to live, without impacting user-updated content (such as a sales system, a blog, user ratings etc).

It's not intended to exclude *everything except one folder*. That would again risk introducing inconsistencies.

You can make whatever changes you like on the staging system, and if you don't want to keep them, redeploy the live site > Staging, so that you revert the staging system to an exact replica of the live site.

StageIt is already Joomla 4 compliant, and has been for over a year :-)

Kind regards, Barnaby Dixon

Hi there,

Thank you for your message.

The staging environment is always at /stageit/ , it's not possible to use a separate subdomain or different folder. It is created and managed automatically by StageIt

Regards

Hello,

Thank you for your message.

StageIt is an environmental staging extension, it'll exactly replicate your Live > Staged > Live environment, but it's not possible to take minor or granular changes and apply them individually.

Have a great day!

Hello,

StageIt is smart, intuitive and works well, and is specifically built for Joomla. Not comparable with other staging environments. None of the issues you've mentioned are an issue with StageIt.

Hope that helps

Good morning

A 500 error means your server isn't able to process something.

Often it means a memory limit, space limit, or CPU limit has been reached, and the server has timed out or prevented the process from running.

Reducing the deployment speed will help if it's a server resource limitation, although in some cases the server will still block you if it's a low budget shared option. But it's also worth checking available disk space.

In other cases, it'll mean an issue with the PHP environment, where a required function isn't available, this might happen for example if you are running a very old version of PHP, or if it's a custom install of PHP without standard functions available.

That will be resolved by ensuring PHP is up to date and appropriate for your version of Joomla, for example PHP 5.6 for Joomla 2.5, or PHP 7+ for Joomla 3+

Also it'd be helpful to note exactly where the issue happens, e.g. is it during database analysis, file and folder analysis, etc...

Hope that helps! Please reach out if you need further assistance, and if you'd like me to take a look email me separately with access.

Barnaby

Sorry for the delay. It is a shared server, but when I initially installed the plugin, I was able to run a backup without any adjustments.
There is plenty of space on the hard drive (and I don't have any restrictions on my login profile).
I'm running PHP 7.3.15, and it's a stock install of PHP.
Joomla is on 3.9.15.
The system chokes at "Deploying your Files and Folders" (20% completed). I'm wondering if it's a possible user rights issue?