I am an old school java developer who is considering a using wordpress. I'm used to developing locally on my PC (yeah yeah not even a mac) and then ftping my files up to a production environment on a remote server. My high level review of wordpress gives me the impression that typically there is no concept of lower environments and that all updates occur directly in production. Is this the case? If not, can someone explain how one goes about uploading the files to a web site?
Thanks,
Jeff
WordPress is database driven, so it doesn't rely on the cumulative process of building new HTML pages for every addition or revision, as you would do in Dreaweaver or something similar. The core files in a WP deployment are merely the shell to which content from the database is "hooked" in for display.
You can, however, setup a local environment for development purposes by using WAMP or MAMP (Mac). The process of transferring the site to production is a matter of FTP-ing the whole shebang, and then modifying the local database so that anything in it that says "http://localhost/testsite" is changed to "http://foamfrogs.com" or whatever. Then upload it to your hosting service's db server. It's a bit tricky, but once you do it a few times, it becomes routine.
there are a few products out there that can automate the process:
Backup Buddy: http://pluginbuddy.com/ ServerPress: http://serverpress.com/
I haven't used ether of these because I'm cheap and like doing things the long stupid way sometimes, but it might be worth it if you have a high volume of work and need streamlined workflow. - Steve
Wordpress is a CMS masked like a blogging - platform.
It is highly flexible, highly powerful and highly extendable. It is running on PHO + MySQL.
If you never have used any CMS before - I suggest you do the following :
FTP it to your server .
prepare a DB (like in instructions)
Start to play !
(if you need documentation - look here and in your best new friend : the CODEX here
After you will do that - many things will start to be much more clear .
you can then start to extend it with themes and plugins .
Now - About the word "development" -
It really depends if by "development" you mean creating sites with wordpress , or creating the TOOLS for wordpress to create sites.
By tools I mean Developing themes and plugins (mentioned before ) This will come fast after that - but first , trust me - just start to play in order to understand the terminology and the process .
To make a simple website with wordpress - you actually do not need to be a programmer, just like the fact that my mom does not need to be a software engineer in order to use wordpad. everything is with an intuitive user interface , and in the past it took me 20 minutes to teach computer - illiterate clients how to use it.
One of the greatest things about wordpress (and one of the biggest secrets for it´s meteoric growing and success ) is the wonderful and HUGE support base in form of the community , blogs, websites etc. etc..
Now - to really answer your direct question -
The opinions as to what is the "Über" dev environment for wordpress will be as numerous as the developers themselves, each has it´s own preferences and tools.
I can only recommend mine (which is also pretty common , but most importantly , EASY and SIMPLE)
If you are on PC (like you said) -
I have been using XAMPP for wordpress development for more 6 years now , and it has never failed me . configuration works out-of-the-box. (MAC equivalent is WAMP or MAMP - but since I never had a MAC , and hopefully never will - I can not testify..)
Some other tools :
BONUS :
On a personal note I must say that i owe all my programming skills to wordpress. when I started - wordpress was in it´s dipers, and I had ZERO programming skills. Now wordpress is huge , and even if i still regard myself as a novice - have already made a dedicated industrial scale system for hotels managements integration - all based on wordpress.
this last part is not to hail my own skills, but what I said in the begining:
wordpress is highly flexible, highly powerful and highly extendable. that´s all you need to know .
Now go and play !
Just a quick tip from me - when moving Wordpress databases from your local development environment to another server the big pain in the neck is that fact that Wordpress itself (and lots of plugin/theme developers) used serialized arrays to store data. So if you do a find-and-replace on the database to replace your old url with the new one, you will disable lots of things like config settings and widgets (text widgets specifically, but there's tons loads of stuff you end up having to recreate).
My recommendation is this fantastic piece of code here;
http://interconnectit.com/124/search-and-replace-for-wordpress-databases/
What a time saver, you just upload your Wordpress database, upload this script to the root of your server and run through the quick form. Bingo, all urls changed, no problem with serialized data being lost.
Big speed increase when deploying sites.
And in reference to your question on files - you just FTP the lot, the only thing you have to change is the .htaccess (likelyhood is your site will not be in the root in development but it will be in production) and the wp-config.php file that gives database connection details. That's it.
Good luck!!
