[syncCto] Synchronize multiple contao installations

[andreasisaak]

Hi community members,

today I would like to present you one of our extensions.

syncCto provides the ability to synchronize multiple contao installations based on a basic installation. All actions can be conveniently carried out in the backend. By integrating into the contao permission system editors can also synchronize a selection of predefined database tables and files.

An integrated backup manager backup selected database tables, either the entire contao installation or just the personal data. Backups can be imported again.

By using syncCto editors can work quickly and easily in a preview system, and then synchronize the current and approved version to the live system. Other possible applications might include:

Preview -> Live -> Preview
Development -> Preview -> Live -> Development

I would be happy if any one could use the extension. syncCto want to simplify every day with contao and your customers. In the meantime, we use syncCto as a big alternative for the frontend preview of contao. The customer use two installations (preview and live), work on the preview and synchronize every day or week his changes to the live website.

Any suggestions are welcome. If you find bugs or something else, please write a ticket. Even if all the tickets are in german so far, we want to support the english community in the future.

For the first questions, please look at the https://github.com/menatwork/syncCto...ster/README.md on Github.

Reposity: http://contao.org/en/extension-list/vie ... to.en.html
Issues: https://github.com/menatwork/syncCto/issues

[septentrio]

Sounds very interesting ! Thank you

[andreasisaak]

Today we published the stable.

[Medianomaly]

Thanks for the announcement. I've been following it a little bit and tried out a couple of previous versions. It looks like it would be really useful so I look forward to really digging into it in the near future.

That's one problem I haven't solved yet. We usually have a development version and a live version. Many times we'll be developing a new feature or revamping an existing one, which of course we do on the development site.

But in the meantime (especially if it's a big enhancement) the client may have made some updates to the live site (adding news or blog posts, changing content, etc.).

So the trick is syncing the 2 databases again without losing one another's changes. I use Navicat, but it's still largely a manual process to get them in sync again.

Is that something that SyncCto can help with? How would it handle syncing in that scenario?

Thanks again!

[andreasisaak]

Is that something that SyncCto can help with? How would it handle syncing in that scenario?

We work on this issue! We want to "close" all the backend areas - the client published a new news entry and you work on the events. If you then need to work on the news, you lock this area simply for the customer. I know, its not the best solution but a really "diff" between 2 databases breaks every time and performance.

What do you mean? Is our temporary solution a option for you?

[Medianomaly]

Hi there,

Yeah, that's what I meant. Thanks!

Reading and asking around, that's what I gathered too -- that it isn't really possible to reliably do a "diff" between 2 databases, no matter how.

Navicat used to have a 2-way sync feature, but it looks like it's been dropped in the latest version, probably for the reasons you stated. I never really trusted it enough to use it that much anyway.

I'm thinking the diff feature in Contao 3 will at least help identify which tables to look out for when updating a site. So that's pretty nice.

Locking sounds like the next best thing. The only problem I run into is sometimes we have a set of enhancements that might take 2-4 weeks to complete, but in the meantime clients are blogging for SEO or updating content, and that's a long time to tell them not to touch their site. So I think a combination of locking and just manually merging tables (depending on the time an update takes) is the way to go still.

Thanks! I have a couple of your extensions to try now.