Common questions and support documentation

A better deployment workflow

Follow these steps and you’ll get your WPMerge up and running in no time.

1. Clone the complete production site into a dev site using your tool of choice.
   
2. Install and activate the WPMerge plugin (from here - https://s3.amazonaws.com/wpmerge/wp-merge_v0.9.1RC.zip) on both Dev & Prod sites.
   
3. In the respective sites, choose if they are production or development.
   
   
4. To set up the plugins, click on the "Click here" link as shown below on both the sites
   
   
5. Connect Dev & Prod sites - Copy the key from the prod plugin, paste it into the dev plugin and Connect.
   
   
6. Once the sites are connected, you will be prompted to freshly Clone the Prod DB once. It is recommended that you do that before you start development.
   
7. Once the prod DB is cloned, certain DB modifications will be done and all changes to the dev DB will start getting recorded.

NOTES -

Before starting development

• Once you connect the prod and dev sites, you can clone the Prod DB (Show advanced options → Clone Prod DB) to make sure you have the latest copy of the Prod DB before starting dev.
• Make sure the recording switch is turned ON (green). If, for some reason, you do not want some changes to be recorded, you can switch it OFF and turn it back ON when done, without fail!

During development

• At any stage during development, if you want to continue development on a fresh copy of production DB, you can do so by clicking on the [Clone Prod DB and Apply changes] button. This will clone a current copy of the Prod DB onto the Dev DB and apply all recorded changes so far.
  

After completing development

• You can test the merging process by clicking on the [Test Merge] button (Show advanced options → Test Merge). This will merge the current Prod DB with the changes made and all DB modifications made to record changes will be reverted. In other words, the Dev site will be exactly how the Production site will be after pushing it live.
  
• After testing the merge, you can upload new and modified files to your site via FTP. You can get the files as a ZIP by clicking on the [Download files as a ZIP] button. Make sure you extract the files and upload them to the WordPress root directory. Files will be dropped in the appropriate folders.
  
• Once you verify that all changes have been applied and everything looks good, you can push the Dev DB to Prod by clicking on the [Push Dev to Prod] button.
  
• After confirming that everything looks good and pushing the site live, you can discard the recorded changes, readying it for the next development cycle.