Deployment (Prod & Staging)

Pragma CMS is designed with a "Clean Monolith" architecture. This means moving a site from your local machine to a production server is a simple, predictable process involving the movement of two specific things: your Site Directory and your Database.

1. Local to Production Workflow

Because each site is isolated within the /sites/ folder, the deployment follows a linear path:

1. Export the Database: Dump your local MySQL/MariaDB database into a .sql
    file.
2. Transfer the Site Folder: Upload your specific site directory (e.g., /sites/my-awesome-site/) to the same location on your VPS.
   • Note: You do not need to re-upload the cms-versions/
      folder if the core is already installed on the server.
3. Import the Database: Import your .sql file into the server's database (via CLI or a tool like HeidiSQL/TablePlus).

2. Staging Environment

Pragma CMS supports a native Staging workflow to test changes before they go live.

• Isolation: Staging usually lives in a parallel directory (e.g., /var/www/pragma-cms-staging/) with its own database.
• One-Click Sync: If you used the official installation script, you have access to a deployment utility. Running sudo /var/www/pragma-cms/scripts/cli/deploy_staging.sh will automatically clone your Production files and database into the Staging environment.
• Security: Staging environments are automatically protected by Basic Auth (defined in your Caddyfile) and are set to noindex to prevent search engines from crawling your test data.