[wp-hackers] absolute URLs in plug-ins and custom types

[Bryan Petty]

On 07/06/2012 02:08 PM, Otto wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 6, 2012 at 11:09 AM, Shasta Willson <shastaw at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I have to agree with Bryan. I consider the move to deployment (and
>> maintenance of a matching testing server) one of the weakest areas of
> 
> Why are you "deploying" your content in the first place?
> 
> The notion of development->testing->production is fundamentally a
> software or manufacturing notion. It doesn't make a whole heck of a
> lot of sense to be forcing your writers/authors/content-creators to
> use that same approach.

It does if they are developing themes around your content, especially
when that content revolves around custom post types, and tons of
metadata. Remember, content precedes design [1,2,3].

[1] http://www.zeldman.com/2008/05/06/content-precedes-design/
[2]
http://webstandardssherpa.com/reviews/designing-for-content-creating-a-message-hierarchy/
[3] http://www.abookapart.com/products/the-elements-of-content-strategy

> (In fact, at previous jobs I've had, using real production data
> anywhere but the production server was a fire-able offense, since
> doing so actually broke a few laws.. Financial data in that case, but
> still...)

If you're storing financial or medical records inside of notoriously
insecure software primarily designed for blogging and content
management, you have way more problems to worry about than running live
data on internal development servers. Regardless, who said any of us
were? What we're talking about here is *having the option* of running a
development server with a snapshot of the live site for real-world
testing/design/development for those of us smart enough to not be
storing sensitive information in our WordPress sites.

-- 
Bryan Petty
WordPress Developer
bpetty at bluehost.com