Testing vs. Development

[eluser]Iverson[/eluser]
I develop a lot of websites. I typically buy the domain/hosting, and code everything under that domain. I don't, however, have a "development" environment. This ends up being a pain because the stats from cpanel are always skewed because I'M always the number one amount of hits, views, etc. I use dreamweaver CS3 which has the "remote server" and "testing server" functionality but I can't figure out how to use it. Any ideas on how to seperate the two? Fyi, I don't want to run it locally because I develop from different computers.

[eluser]attos[/eluser]
I also develop in different computers and different OSes. What I do is to have a subversion repository where I commit the changes and update the other development environments. The only thing I have to change is the system/applilcation/config/config.php file and adjust the base_url and log_threshold configuration settings.

Sometimes I also use a thumb drive to move from one dev environment to another.

[eluser]Developer13[/eluser]
I would recommend a central development environment. It will be much less of a pain in the ass.

[eluser]kRON[/eluser]
[EDIT] sorry just read you don't want to develop it locally. I don't know how the Dreamweaver feat. for test and deployment server works, but if you have a test server, you could work on the test server and run PEAR, or some application, on the test server to remotely deploy to the production server.

As for the stats problem, have you thought about using google analytics to track stats?

[eluser]obiron2[/eluser]
I have discovered that XAMMP, Hapedit and BalzeFTP will all run from a data key as they do not make registry entries on XP. You may need to disable IIS if it is running

This makes my development environment portable (I code at work in my lunchtime and at home normally on the laptop, but sometimes on the old desktop if necessary)

If you want to deploy on a proper web server and use pre-production testing, I would suggest registering a domain and installing codeigniter.

You can make multiple copies of the Application folder, one for each project and create a copy of the index.php and change the application folder to look at the correct version. You are then using one instance of Codeigniter and different copies of the application

you would call these with
www.mywebsite.com/app1.php/controller/method/param1/param2....
www.mywebsite.com/app2.php/controller/method/param1/param2....

when you are ready to deploy the code to live, you simply copy it from from the dev server to the application folder on the live server.

obiron