Need to auto reset a demo site

  • Hello,

    I have been searching around trying to find a solution, but have ran into a wall with this one.

    I’m being asked to create a demo site for a client that will allow people to test out the back-end editing features of a WP installation. The catch is … anything that has been done needs to be cleared out and the site reset to it’s default settings. Ideally this would happen once per day. I have seen demo sites set up this way, but I’m not sure where to start with a WP site.

    Any ideas, or direction would be great, Thanks … Scott

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  • It depends on whether you allow people to add media (images or sound or video) or plug-ins or themes or anything else that actually involves Files on your web site. Rather than simply database entries.

    That will determine whether you need to restore just the database. Or also need to restore the files that form part of WordPress (i.e. – WordPress folder and possibly the root).

    Then you would just do a restore of the database overnight each night. And possibly restore all the files.

    The backup(s) only need to be done once as you are restoring to the same “state” every night.

    Database restores, if done properly, automatically delete, redefine and populate each table, so there is no need to worry about getting rid of what was left there.

    The fastest way to restore the files would be to use a .tar.gz file (kind of like .zip) on the host, then delete all the WordPress files and restore them from the .tar.gz file. If you have cPanel, this is done with an Expand icon, as I recall.

    But the real question is how to automate the process, once you’ve figured out a process that works properly. There, it depends on what your web host offers in terms of automated processes via scheduling. I think you’ll have to check their documentation and possibly chat with their support folks for an answer.

    Thread Starter scottprock

    (@scottprock)

    Thank you … just as I was thinking, not exactly an easy solution. Your information is helpful though. I did start looking into clearing or resetting the MySQL, perhaps I can set up a cronjob to handle this.

    Thanks again, your information is reassuring and I feel I’m headed in the right direction.

    … Scott

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