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Here's the rundown: - We have a web site built with a commercial CMS (Sitefinity) - The web site is .NET - We have a test server and the live server set up for development (HTML, CSS, JavaScript).

I'm not a .NET programmer, but I work on a lot of frontend work. My question is this:

When I make CSS changes on the test server, is it normal practice for the entire web site to be "pushed" over to the live server? In other words, can I not just move over the CSS file from development to the live server? (It does not work when I do this.)

I ask this because every time CSS changes are made, the entire web site has to shutdown for 10-20 minutes to "push" the entire development to the live server. This seems like an unusual practice for something so small as making a few CSS changes, and it heavily slows down my work. Shutting down an entire web site to publish one basic CSS file just seems unreasonable of a service.

Can someone please educate me about your processes for .NET and CSS changes? What are the best practices in the industry? I would like to better my understanding of this.

Thank you. Your insight is appreciated.

Maria Gosur
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3 Answers3

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We use Sitefinty as well and you can just copy or FTP the CSS file or files instead of redeploying the entire site. I like to use Beyond Compare.

Ben
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  • For some reason, the copy/paste of the CSS file or FTP doesn't work. The redeploying of the site must always take place. Could this be a configuration issue somewhere? Beyond Compare looks interesting, thanks. – Maria Gosur Mar 18 '14 at 19:21
  • Do you know where or what platform the site is being hosted on? Most of ours are on EC2 instances, so we either set up FTP or just RDP into the server and transfer files that way. – Ben Mar 18 '14 at 20:13
  • Unfortunately I do not know this information. I'll take a look into this, thanks. – Maria Gosur Mar 21 '14 at 15:43
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We have some ways to push the changes on our development server to live server using sitefinity:

  1. We can choose synchronization option in sitefinty, using that we can push content and all from one server to other server.

    http://www.sitefinity.com/documentation/gettingstarted/getting-started-synchronizing-data-between-two-servers

  2. You are doing updation on css files only then need not to push all code every time, might be after doing changes you are not able to see reflection, in that case please publish the page once and you can see reflection.

    Please let me know if you want to know more.

Systematix Infotech
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It's possible there is some sort of caching going on. perhaps you can check the settings for static content with your host or in IIS to see when static files like css expire.

In addition you can restart Sitefinity by going to Administration Settings > Basic > Languages and clicking Save (or installing the Falafel Dashboard which has a handy restart button you can put on the home page)

Restarting the site should clear the cache and show you the changes. I hope this is helpful!

Community
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SelAromDotNet
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  • Awesome, thanks Josh! I will look further into caching which could very well be an issue, and the Falafel Dashboard looks cool! When Sitefinity 'restarts', is that going to make the web site inactive for a period of time? – Maria Gosur Mar 19 '14 at 15:05
  • restart will indeed take a few moments, depending on how many modules you have installed. I've seen it take anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes, but it really depends on your setup. good luck! – SelAromDotNet Mar 19 '14 at 19:32
  • Our restart usually takes 10-15 minutes. Just seems like a long time. – Maria Gosur Mar 21 '14 at 15:38
  • that's definitely unusual and far too long, but also difficult to pinpoint. I would start with this checklist: http://www.sitefinity.com/blogs/team-blog/2012/12/19/sitefinity-optimization-checklist as well as adding a blank, fresh Sitefinity site to your server and see if an empty site does the same. If it does it has to be an issue with your host/server. hope this is helpful! – SelAromDotNet Mar 21 '14 at 15:48