I understand that Umbraco caches all database content in an XML file on the web server. Would it be possible to run an Umbraco instance with just that file, and no database?
The idea would be to do all editing on an instance with a database, but have UAT and Live as read only environments without a database. Deploying dev to UAT or Live would mean copying all updated files and the XML file to the database-less UAT or Live instances.
This is possible, please see Decoupling Umbraco from your front-end website.
Related
I'm new to Umbraco. I'm tasked to move our website (which runs on Umbraco 7.4) to Azure.
I've decided to go with App Service for the site.
My question is what is the best approach to getting our current instance of Umbraco on Azure? The options I'm thinking of are:
Option 1
1. App:
a) Use Azure's marketplace and install Umbraco CMS
b) Copy the folders from Umbraco on our current server to Azure web app server folder
2. Database
a) Export databases from our current server and import to new Azure database
Option 2
1. App
a) Create Azure Web App
b) Same as Option 1 above, copy the folders from Umbraco on our current server to Azure web app server folder
2. Database
Same as Option 1
Basically is at simple as just copying (download) the "Umbraco" folder from our current server to new Azure web app server?
Thanks
Copying the files (and the database, of course) should be fine, Umbraco doesn't "install" anything outside the website itself :-) Either way should work though.
I'm deploying my site to Umbraco Cloud and that's working fine, but I want to deploy to my own live server without Umbraco CLoud services.
I know the process of Umbraco cloud service.
If I change any content on local Umbraco that can effect on server system without Umbraco as a service, is there any alternate process to do that?
I have not used Umbraco as a Service but when hosting sites yourselves there is no standard feature to push content changes from one environment to another.
Umbraco offer A closed-source licensed package Courier that is designed to manage the deployment of content:
https://umbraco.com/products-and-support/courier/
Additionally you may wish to investigate uSync.Content. I have used uSync (for document types ect.) with great success but have not used the Content edition: https://our.umbraco.org/projects/developer-tools/usynccontentedition/
The final, more hands on, approach is to do a database compare between environments to generate update scripts that can be applied but this does require a good understanding of the Umbraco schema to avoid overwriting/loosing content.
I'm trying to deploy one of the default template apps that VS2012 generates for MVC4 to a production server (not on Azure).
It turns out that I'm not smart enough to figure out how to get Web Deploy working. After spending an hour on diagnosing different 404s, 403s, and 401s, I am ready to either ditch Web Deploy altogether, or start my project using PHP instead.
Can I just copy and paste my files and put them somewhere?
I'm fine with manually updating the database schema.
Anything else that needs to be updated?
You can publish directly to "File System" via "Publish" menu in VS (choose folder on production server). Then create WebApp on IIS with this folder (on the server) choose ApplicationPool 4.0 open port for your application if needed and start it.
What in the world makes you even think you need to use web deploy? You do realize that the web publishing wizard has several options to choose from, including FTP, file system, etc... I don't see how you could miss these.
I created an asp.net mvc project in VS. I created an azure cloud service. Within the VS solution I added an azure project to enable me to publish to my cloud service. The cloud service has a web role and it’s published to a production environment. When I publish the project, I have my domain .cloudapp.net and I can then view my published project from a browser.
Job done. All good so far.
What I’m unclear on (and this is partly because my azure and asp.net mvc knowledge is limited) is where the project files actually reside (and the file/folder structure) and how to access them? I know they are on an IIS server somewhere but that’s about it.
With ‘traditional’ websites you have a webserver, a wwwroot folder and you stick your web pages etc into them and can see/access them through ftp etc.
Apart from wanting to know the answer to the above question I actually want to farm out the web ui (view) part to a web developer whilst I concentrate on the back end stuff. He doesn’t have visual studio so I’m unclear on how to best approach this?
I’ve noticed on the windows azure publish summary within my solution that you can enable remote desktop and enable web deploy which I suspect may be of help to me but as the solution is all working fine at the moment and I’m demoing it to a client tomorrow I’m a bit reluctant to make any last minute changes..as I’m sure we’ve all suffered the consequences of that before.
What I’m unclear on is where the project files actually reside
(and the file/folder structure) and how to access them?
As you have mentioned, these files reside on the server itself. If you connect to your server via Remote Desktop, you can see the files under D:\sitesroot folder (actual name of the folder can be found by launching IIS Manager on that server).
Having said that, it is not recommended to make changes to the files directly on the server. This is because if your server goes bad for any reason, Microsoft will provision a new server for you and it takes the code from the package file when you last deployed your application. This the changes you have made on that server will be lost.
Regarding your other question about having somebody focus on front-end development, I'm pretty sure you don't want him to working on production server directly. I'm assuming you have a centralized code repository somewhere where everybody checks in their code and then you build stuff and then deploy it.
I am very new to Windows Azure - have been into asp.net for about 10 years now and have been deploying applications via Database backup and restore on production and copy of final code bits from source control to the root folder on production database.
I am doing my initial reading and finding it a bit difficult to absorb the overall process of deploying an ASP.Net MVC web Application to Azure.
I have managed to have the database and the website code on Azure and it is up and running, but I can't get to terms on the following points and want to understand them better to have a regular deployment on place as versions of my app keep going up.
Database doesn't work like backup a local database and then upload .bak file and restore to the production server.
Nor can I see my website files.
Update: 04-Aug-2013
Azure Websites have an FTP option. You can see your FTP host name in respective website Dashboard. The username and password for FTP are located in the publish settings file (note: you got to pick up the FTP username and password, NOT the publish username/password. They both are different.
When I am getting ready for version 2.0 of my product, how do I get the database from the Azure SQL, upgrade it to 2.0 and put it back?
I assume the publishing wizard from Visual Studio should be able to take care of code upgrade, but how do I edit my production web.config file on the fly?
How do I take my website offline and show users my custom "offline" page when I am in the middle of the upgrade? (Stopping the website shows up the Windows Azure site not available page).
For your database backup / upgrade questions
For migration of databases to SQL Azure (or pulling them down) the SQL Database Migration Wizard has proven to be a lifesaver for me, get it here:
http://sqlazuremw.codeplex.com/
This will pull and push both data and schema for your database.
For seeing your website files
You won't be able to if you are using Windows Azure Websites.
For editing web.config on fly
You can't. BUT -- you can edit connection strings and appsettings through the 'configure' tab of your website like so:
Turning your website offline during upgrade
While you cannot specifically use the app_offline route without another deployment. One thing you could do is change your default document. This is easily done right in the same 'configure' tab for the website in the portal as I mentioned above, see here:
Hope this helps.