website update

I’d like to share a few thoughts on how to organize a website update, based on my recent failiure in that area.

The first error you can make, is to go on without a plan. I know this may sound hilarious, but the most important thing in this venture is to PLAN everything properly. Yes you must PLAN everything that’s going to happen. To be honest, I didn’t. And I believed my colleagues that everything works perfectly on their local pcs’.

That’s how you make your second mistake. Not by believing, but by not having a test environment, with exactly the same parameters as the production server. This might be difficult to achieve, but believe me when I say it’s worth the effort and money. I didn’t have that either.

What happens when you don’t have those prerequisites? You end up with your webapp going nuts and instead of promised few minutes, the update takes more than a day. I’m learning through my own mistakes though and I’m not going to make that one again. If you’re still uncertain whether you really need to spend those few extra bucks on a test server, read this post once again.