Setting up duplicate Forum

[JBAOC]

Hello

For training purposes I am trying to set up a second instance of my club's forum.  I have copied the existing forum into another directory and changed the settings.php file to reflect the new path.

Entering the test forum location and logging in (the URL is correctly displayed in the browser) when I do a post in the test forum it also appears in the live forum.  Is it possible to disconnect the forums so they work independently?

Thanks in advance for anyone's help on this.

Regards

[Illori]

run What is repair_settings.php? to fix all your paths and URLs.

you did set it up with a separate database right?

[Kindred]

even aside from that...  you **NEED** to copy the DATABASE as well as the forum files... otherwise, everytime you change the settings on one site (prod or test) you will be screwing up the other site

[Deprecated]

even aside from that...  you **NEED** to copy the DATABASE as well as the forum files... otherwise, everytime you change the settings on one site (prod or test) you will be screwing up the other site

"Duh" post of the month, ROTFLMAO!

Dude, you need a second database for your test forum.

[aegersz]

i have 2 other forums (SMF systems) other than my public-facing one:

1. a vanilla version running as a quality assurance system. it runs a cloned database and the files are in "/var/www/html/smfnew" and down.

2. my "mirror" on my intranet: from the mirror, i rsync the production database backup and i rsync the production files in "/var/www/html/" and all directories down ... there are many little files due to my appetite for mods.

i manually update my mirror and it takes only a minute to run.

repair_settings.php is a must and has to be run for each UNIQUE SMF system.

[Deprecated]

I run my production forum, a doppleganger kept to the same config and contents as my production forum (with suitable changes to remove interaction, and have 4 test servers, mostly with no mods and no posts, virgin as it comes from a new install. I usually have 1-2 of the test systems working on mod packages intended for the production system or for release at the SMF mod site (or both).

One thing many may have overlooked, as an improved method of isolating your plethora of production and test forums: the sub-domain. For example: example.com (my production forum), test1.example.com, test2.example.com, test3.example.com etc. This allows you to assign completely different folders for the various forums and precludes file interactions since they are in different roots of your www tree. (or are they leaves?)

Even better, they cannot be reached from your production forum and are non-obvious enough to not have anybody stumble upon them (not that it would really matter).