Go-Live Procedure

This procedure describes the steps to take when switching your site from being hosted on a development server to existing on your live website server.


Best Practice Recommendations

  • Prepare to go live at a time when you believe the fewest amount of viewers will be visiting the website.
  • Schedule the go-live with OmniUpdate so that members of the OmniUpdate support team can be standing by.
  • Ensure that the live server is set up to parse everything the site's pages need (i.e., server-side includes, PHP, et cetera).


Go-Live Steps

  1. Set up an FTP connection for OmniUpdate to connect from the staging server to your live server. This can be FTP, PASV FTP, or SFTP over SSH.
  2. Ensure that OmniUpdate's server and workstation IPs are being let through any firewalls or restrictions you may have on the server. For a list of these IPs, please e-mail Support at support@omniupdate.com.
  3. Make a backup of your live website as it currently is. We recommend that you make two in case there's a problem with one of them (e.g., file corruption).
  4. Download all files from the development server via FTP. If you do not already have the FTP information to be able to do this, a level 10 user can obtain it by logging into OmniUpdate using the Mozilla Firefox browser; going to Setup > Websites > Edit; and copying the FTP host, user, and password information displayed there (to view the FTP password, click the clipboard icon to the right of the password field).
  5. Upload one file to the live server, then open this page in a browser to test basic parsing on the live server. If you do not see images or CSS that you are supposed to, that's all right, as long as the page and any includes appear to be working as expected.
  6. Upload these files to your live server. If you are asked whether you want to overwrite, say "Yes".
  7. Log into OmniUpdate as a level 10 user; go to Setup > Websites > Edit; and change the FTP information from pointing to the development server to pointing to your live server.


Finish

Those are all the steps to going live after having been working on a development server. If you have any questions about this process, contact Support at support@omniupdate.com.