The UDrupal Servers

The UDrupal service consists of two servers: One used for Web site development, and one used to publish your Web site to its audience. The servers are configured identically, allowing you to develop your site in the environment in which it will be published, without accidentally making your "pre-publication" site available to the public.

When you are ready to have your site published, you'll ask IT to move your site from the development server to the production server. The UDrupal servers are configured as follows:

Editing your site on the development server

While your site is on the development server, you can edit the content, themes, and configuration using the Drupal Web interface, use Secure Shell and SFTP to work with files directly on the development server, or use both methods.

Editing your site on the production server

After your site has been published on the production server, access to the version on the development server will be restricted (to avoid confusion as to which version of the site you are working on). However, you can still add content, edit content, and adjust the look and feel of a published site using the Drupal Web interface.

Making major changes

After your site has been publicly available for a period of time, you may need to make major changes to your site. At that time, you can request that IT copy your site from the production server back to the development server. As you work on the copy on the development server, remember that what you are working on is a snapshot of your published site. Therefore, you may have to copy new content from the "old" production site back to the new development site to esure that your new site includes the new design and all appropriate content.