Codeigniter and phpstorm and github

Hi John. I am glad you asked about that.
1) I am trying to integrate Okta, Stripe, Stonly, and sendPulse. These are all SAAS and thus need to be connected to the live internet,
2) I am having trouble with my database queries. Building my report is complex. Instead of just making a single SQL query I have had to run many small sql queries in PHP and build temp tables and finally come up with a result and then display it. For some reports it takes 54 seconds to run, all while the user is waiting for the application to query the database which is on RDS and send back a response. Not acceptable. I've determined that most of that time is spent traveling from my app to the RDS and getting the result back. My theory is that once I get both the RDS and my app server on the same AWS backbone, things will be significantly faster. I of course have thought about creating a stored procedure but the tools to debug such a thing are not really there. Just to make sure, I had a Load Balancer set up so that one person running a report will not cause others doing more mundane tasks to be slowed down. Unfortunately I was not able to get the phpStorm debugger working on the load balancer, thus a staging server was created. My latest "brainstorm" is to create the reports "offline" and save them on S3 for users to download at some later time. 
3) If I am debugging on a live server and a user hits one of my breakpoints, they will be stuck.

These are my reasons for needing a staging server. You could call it a debugging server. I have debugged on AWS before and it is really not easy.
I am using Ubuntu. What is RSYNC?
I have other issues, besides learning Github. I am not sure how to set up the repo's. I know how to physically set them up I just don't know how to logically set them up. My master is setup with a CICD. Do I create the staging as a branch off of that? Won't that branch get pushed to the production server too?

I am currently "down". I had a consultant set up my remote debugging and he set AWS to forward to an controller I won't use anymore and then left on a 10 day vacation.  I could go back to developing on my localhost, but i think that would be counter-productive. To get that to work I needed to use ngrok which allows access to your local machine from the internet. But someone told me that they would never run a production server wo first testing on a staging server.

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From June 2020:
GitHub is working on replacing the term "master" on its service with a neutral term like "main" to avoid any unnecessary references to slavery,
you can read here for more background the reason for the change https://www.zdnet.com/article/github-to-...eferences/
about renaming your branch from master to main: there are a lot of guidelines for example here https://jarv.is/notes/github-rename-master/

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Of course, my knowledge is a long way from yours, but there is a question that I think is fundamental to ask: Are there multiple versions of GitHub? Because the difficulties reported by you, I never imagined that they could exist.
It's a matter of personal choice, but I find it strange to use an IDE to increase productivity, among other things, but still using CLI.
Wouldn't it be time to reassess the tools and means used?

The big problem with today's youth is that I'm not part of it.

Hi Wdeda. I don't think there are multiple versions. I am just learning it with Udemy's Git and Github Bootcamp, and I am about 2/3 through it. So my level is probably about the same as yours.

proof that an old dog can learn new tricks