They are wasting so much time.

August 31, 2006 7:27 AM

Help me mirror a development server for clients outside of the development environment.

I'm consulting for a company, which has the following problem:

The business develops websites on a development server accessible only from within that business's network. The IT team will not give any outside company or person access to that network.

However, an outside partner NEEDS to be able to review and approve those sites before they can be pushed to production. The sites are also in flash, so it's not really a feasible option to print them out because there are mouseover states and animation that need to be viewed.

Currently the time-draining solution is for a person to take screen grabs of the page every second and send a huge ppt to the partner.

IT is scoping a huge "mirror public facing" development site project, but the hours and dollars are too high honestly.

Is there a simple way to take a site (on a development server) and upload it to a space where others can QA it? Is there a solution that a person who is encumbered by fairly restrictive web filters could use?

posted by visual mechanic to technology (7 comments total)

I assume this thing is too complicated to just port to a "staging" directory on the production server, right?

When we do web work, we usually create a staging area on the production server for final testing/approval. That dir is locked down by ip but is otherwise the same as the production page.
posted by mrbugsentry at 8:00 AM on August 31, 2006

Yeah, unfortunately I'm looking for a solution that wouldn't require anyone on the technical team at the company to actually do anything. Like a solution that a normal employee could use.
posted by visual mechanic at 10:58 AM on August 31, 2006

if there's any sort of backend at all you're going to need to get the technical team involved.
posted by fishfucker at 11:48 AM on August 31, 2006

Contractual obligations prevent me from outlining in a public forum what I'd be happy to discuss via email.
posted by orthogonality at 4:40 PM on August 31, 2006

This company doesn't have any kind of VPN access to their network from outside?
posted by AmbroseChapel at 4:50 PM on August 31, 2006

They have VPN access but security absolutely will not give it to anyone who isn't an employee or at least a contractor.

I guess what I was wondering is "is there a way to pull down all the content from one site and then use some free hosting mirror site to post it."

I know it seems crazy to not want to include the technical people but that's the route they've been going and literally a year later they are no closer to a solution.
posted by visual mechanic at 7:09 AM on September 1, 2006

The time has come for someone from the business side to put the smackdown on the IT people.

IT should be about enabling the business to do stuff, not getting in the way.
posted by mrbugsentry at 7:34 AM on September 1, 2006