problem when migrating from development into live server

Question

I'm facing problem when migrate my web app project from development server to live server. the reason is because i just realize that the live server has different PHP version and available memory lower then mine.

i found this after client give me their ftp and cpanel access of their server, which is a shared host.

so,

1. how do we handle this situation ? and avoid similar problem in the future ?
2. What is the most suitable configuration of a development server ?

btw, i use xampp in windows. it's has apache and mysql.

Answer 1

In the future you should agree upon minimum specs for the production server, and tune your development server appropriately (if necessary). It would also help to get access (or information about) the production system as soon as possible, so you can make any necessary corrections early on.

Answer 2

I had to face the exact same problem (being the client ...) although I insisted that the web agency had to test on our hosting servers, they did not. When they delivered, pretty much everything broke because the versions and settings very different.

If the website is to be hosted on a shared hosting server, quite often it's possible to get your own space for a few bucks. If you don't want to bother replicating the exact same versions/setting environement, it's a cheap way to test your work

Answer 3

I have an old Pentium || with about 256Mb of ram that is my development environment, for PHP work I usually further restrict memory usage to something moderately low. Then before I write one line of code, I demand that my clients give me a saved copy of the output of phpinfo from the environment they wish me to deploy too. With that last bit, I'll reconfigure my mini-box to run exactly the same.

That's worked well for me for several years because I am almost always guaranteed a performance boost on deployment ( which client's like ) and I don't have to worry about environment conflicts.