Multiple environment (Development, Staging, Live) in Drupal

Question

Hi guys,

I am sure the title is pretty much the question but I would like to explain a bit more...

Drupal is great CMS but it lacks of process to achieve multiple environment (Development -> Staging -> Live)

Why I need multiple environment?
For example, the site live and you want to add functionality or amend something, of course u do not want to directly go live so what you will do is actually go development first then if u have client then u go to staging then at last go to live...

So is there any way to achieve this?
Of course the option to overwrite the database completely is not an answer that I look for... Since the live has user-data in the database...

Thanks

Answer 1

You could take a look at Capistrano for deploying your app in multiple environments, automated of course.

Answer 2

You can use the Features module for this.