Forum Replies Created

Viewing 15 replies - 1 through 15 (of 38 total)
  • Plugin Author barteled

    (@barteled)

    There shouldn’t be any problems but no plugin is perfect. 🙂

    If you do undo multisite and still have issues, I’ll gladly provide assistance to get it to work.

    Plugin Author barteled

    (@barteled)

    If you are on a multisite this may be an issue. I have not done extensive testing with multisite. For right now I would not recommend adding it to a multisite install.

    Plugin Author barteled

    (@barteled)

    For number 1 and 2, the sandbox is not really about doing changes and then undoing them. When you create a sandbox, it copies all of the files of your site to a new directory under the sandbox folder. It also creates a copy of all of the database tables that have the WordPress prefix. So essentially a completely new site is created and you switch to that site via a cookie that is set in the browser.

    Try removing the cookie and clearing your cache if deactivating the sandbox doesn’t work. From what you are describing it sounds like the browser still has the activation cookie set.

    Do you remember seeing any errors when you created the sandbox? Could you provide a listing of the tables in your wordpress database?

    Forum: Reviews
    In reply to: [Sandbox] Didn't work
    Plugin Author barteled

    (@barteled)

    One of the risks of a plugin such as this is that it can easily conflict with the millions of variations of plugins floating around out there. I try to resolve the issues as a I can through the support forum. Feel free to post your problem there if you would like it resolved.

    Forum: Plugins
    In reply to: [Sandbox] Error Activating
    Plugin Author barteled

    (@barteled)

    The plugin needs to make a directory called sandbox in the base directory of WordPress (i.e. where wp-config.php is). You may need to check the permissions of the directory that WordPress is installed in and change them temporarily to allow creation of the directory by the plugin. After the directory is created you can change the permissions of the base directory back.

    Forum: Plugins
    In reply to: [Sandbox] Sandbox security
    Plugin Author barteled

    (@barteled)

    Does it kick you out of just the admin interface or can you not see any of the site? Could you provide the contents of your .htaccess file?

    Plugin Author barteled

    (@barteled)

    Sorry for the delayed response on this. For some reason I stopped getting e-mails when there are posts to the support forum for my plugin.

    Adding a capability to send a link to a client is on the roadmap. It should be something I can provide shortly.

    The sandboxes are independent from your live site. You can add multiple sites and delete them as you wish. The plugin does performs multiple checks to insure that the sandbox will not cause impact to your live site. That being said, I recommend a full backup before using testing this or any new plugin for that matter.

    Plugin Author barteled

    (@barteled)

    Currently the plugin only creates the sandbox for testing changes. I’ve used it mostly for testing plugin upgrades on e-commerce sites.

    Exporting it would be pretty straight forward and I will provide an update with that feature shortly. I’m also looking at what would be involved in adding a comparison capability and then based on the comparison some sort of migration from a sandbox to the live site. Moving changes back into the live site without breaking things could get a little tricky.

    Over all a feature for safely migrating from a sandbox to live would be pretty involved and I just wanted to see how much interest there was in the plugin before I adding it.

    Thread Starter barteled

    (@barteled)

    The plugin makes a change to .htaccess in the WordPress directory when installed. The lines look something like this:
    # BEGIN Sandbox
    <IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
    RewriteEngine On
    RewriteBase /
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/sandbox/.* [NC]
    RewriteCond %{HTTP_COOKIE} sandbox=([^;]+) [NC]
    RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /sandbox/%1/$1 [NC,L,QSA,S=10]
    </IfModule>
    # END Sandbox

    Try commenting them out and see if the site returns. If so I can help you further if you provide contents of the .htaccess

    Other then this, no other changes are made to the site when the plugin is installed.

    Thread Starter barteled

    (@barteled)

    The cookie is called “sandbox”. It will only be present when a sandbox is activated.

    I am working on the capability of sharing a sandbox site via a URL that will activate the cookie. Unfortunately WordPress and some plugins do not handle a base URL change well. If you gave the subdirectory that the sandbox is in, the site would most likely not load correctly. This was the primary reason I built the plugin in the first place.

    As for migrating from the sandbox to the test site, this is something I plan to add in a future release once the plugin has picked up some momentum. This is a pretty complex addition but basically I am looking being able to do a diff between the live site and a sandbox and then migrating the changes with a click. So currently you have to recreate the changes manually.

    Thread Starter barteled

    (@barteled)

    If you go to the listing of sandboxes, click the activate button for the sandbox you want to activate. If you saw the link to deactivate the sandbox, it was already activated. The sandbox looks exactly like your live site with the exception of the message box in the admin interface for deactivating it.

    The sandbox is “activated” by placing a cookie in your browser. This notifies the .htaccess file to use a sandbox and which one. If for any reason you damage a sandbox to the point that you cannot use the deactivation link, simply delete the cookie (this varies per browser) and you will be returned to the live site. As you found out, you can also use a different browser and this will bring up the live site.

    The code for deleting the cookie should work in IE 11 but I haven’t actually tested it. I will give it a try and see if I can recreate the issue you had.

    Plugin Author barteled

    (@barteled)

    I have resolved a minor bug that could cause this on some server configurations. Let me know if this resolved your issue.

    Plugin Author barteled

    (@barteled)

    Unfortunately WordPress and a lot of plugins do not handle base URL changes gracefully. If you were able to access the folder directly, the site would almost definitely be broken and require a fair amount of changes to the database to make it display properly. This is actually the main reason why I created this plugin.

    I am working on an update that would allow e-mailing of a link to allow someone access to a sandbox. This could help with support tickets or demos to clients. I currently though do not know when I will finish and release this feature.

    Plugin Author barteled

    (@barteled)

    The sandbox is “Activated” by placing a cookie in your browser. This notifies the .htaccess file to use a sandbox and which one. If for any reason you damage a sandbox to the point that you cannot use the deactivation link, simply delete the cookie (this varies per browser) and you will be returned to the live site. You can also use a different browser and this will bring up the live site.

    Some more information about this is in the FAQ.

    Plugin Author barteled

    (@barteled)

    The problem is a conflict with the Cachify plugin. I tried to install the plugin to recreate it but could not get the plugin to add entries to .htaccess like you have above. Although I could not test it, one of the two suggestions below may work. Make sure you have a backup of the .htaccess file before proceeding.

    First try to move the following tags to the beginning of the file and then activate the plugin:

    # BEGIN Sandbox
    # END Sandbox

    Make sure that each is on its own line, exactly how it is in the current .htaccess except at the top of the file

    If that doesn’t work, edit the following line:
    RewriteCond %{HTTP_COOKIE} !(wp-postpass|wordpress_logged_in|comment_author)_
    to say
    RewriteCond %{HTTP_COOKIE} !(sandbox|wp-postpass|wordpress_logged_in|comment_author)_
    This could be overwritten by the Cachify plugin though in the future.

Viewing 15 replies - 1 through 15 (of 38 total)