Orchard Deployment Best Practices

I am running an Orchard Web Site under MebMatrix Beta 2.
This is my first attempt on deploying an application from my computer.

I noticed that if I add widgets on my local computer and then update, those widgets do not show up on the DASP deployed site unless I click the Copy Orchard.sdf as File checkbox which I asume overwrites the Orchard.sdf file on the deploy server. But won't that overwrites content or user statistics changes in the database also.

Is the best practice that once you deploy an Orchard site, make changes only in the deployed site directly and never on the original site on your own computer?

 

When you install/add new widgets or module on your application in local computer you will always have to push that back to server (redeploy) or else the content won't be reflected on the live site.

Note when you re-deploy, all the settings you made on the live site will get overwritten by the app setting in your local; However, it is my personal opinion to always install/add new module or widgets in your local development env(staging server) and only push it back to live server when you satisfied with the changes that way when something gone wrong your live site won't be affected.

cheers

 

Thanks for the response. This is a dynamic site where there are multiple users who add lots of content and even dynamically can add certain kinds of functionality (from approved types) on the fly. I cannot aford to have that overwritten just because I want to add a module.

I guess I could download the site from the hosting site back to my local computer, install the new functionality and if it works, then go back to the hoste site and install the new module directly in that site (I would have to copy the site back to my computer is because the site is heavily database driven - workflow rules, users and user permissions, etc.). In other words, the copy on my machine can not be trusted to function the same as the version on the production server within a very short time of the most recent update.

Have you run into this problem with your environment?

 

Well then in this case I suggest you make regular backup of the site and add new modules directly on the live site instead of redeploying.