I need an efficient workflow

[nixnerd]

It has dawned on me that I need to be more efficient. Can you guys share some resources for designing and implementing an efficient workflow?

[TheDoc]

I think it really just takes experience. Knowing what went wrong on the last project will help your next one.

Here are some of the tools we use:

• Middleman
• Compass
• Coffeescript
• Backbone

WordPress specific:

• Forge
• Vagrant

Shopify specific:

• Custom shop uploader

We use a tonne of tools, some of our Gemfiles are pretty long. It’s taken us years to get to this point, though!

[__]

What, specifically, do you feel “inefficient” doing?

The single biggest improvement to my workflow in the past year has been git.

[Alen]

Don’t think that you’ll ever settle to one particular workflow. It will always change and evolve. I’m always testing new tools and evaluating things so that it makes my life easier. You say you’re long time Linux user. I recently started writing my own Shell Scripts to expedite the process of setting up new projects. There are tools like Yeoman that help you scaffold a project. Tools like Grunt.js can help with automation such as live reload, code quality check, js, sass, less, minification, ect…

Be careful tho. Some of the side affects of choices is that you get paralysis by analysis. Don’t dwell on decision making too much, just make the decision and keep creating work, evaluate and improve later.

Just to clarify one point about Git: it’s not about backup, when you save your files to external disk that’s backup, when you version control something that mean each time you commit, it can be reverted back. Think of it as that stupid Windows “restore point” crap. If you break something you can easily go back. Another thing with Git, if you host it with Github, is that you have more flexibility when deploying your site. You can clone/push from any computer located just about anywhere in the world. Log into your server via SSH, clone repo, run whatever commands you need to run and you’re up and running. Some resources.

Important: Don’t feel like you need to learn everything at once. You are only one person and this stuff takes time; only so many hours in a day!

Truck along as you are now and integrate something new with every new project you start. Don’t contemplate

That was long… anyways…

What things do you feel are slowing you down? What do you feel like you need to get you to a place where you wanna be with your workflow?

Don’t think that any of us have all this figured out. You’ll soon realize it’s not only that your development needs a workflow but every other aspect of your business.

Not even Google Developers have workflow figured out.

[__]

I just google commands when I run into a problem. Try the “official” tutorial, though.

Learn how to init, add, commit, and push/pull. After you get a a little comfortable, learn about branch and .gitignore files.

Note, there’s more to git than not being “afraid to break things.” I use git for deployment and remote backups also.

Not a tutorial, but some suggestions/pointers:

1) init has a “--bare” option. This is a regular repo, but with no working tree. It’s useful if you want a place to use as a “master backup” repo that you can always push/pull/clone from. I also make one on my production servers as a “staging” repo for pushing updates to a live site.

For your regular “working” repos, just do git init.

2) When you’re just doing work, you’ll usually just work,add,commit normally. If you have a project that you want to preserve (e.g., everything works perfectly but you want to try changing one little bit that could potentially break it all), create a new branch:

checkout -b <branch-name>

…where is whatever you want to call your new branch. Then, work normally. If you need to go back to your “known good” state, just checkout master and everything is sunshine again.

3) I’ll suggest other stuff as I think of it. Or, you experiment and ask questions.

[TheDoc]

Is there a way to use git pushto ftp a project to the hosting server?

This video was made for you: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24NGu1vGBiw

[Alen]

This is what I do.

1. Scaffold my project.
2. Initialize local Git repo / push copy to private GitHub
3. Start working and perform continuous commits.
4. When I’m working by myself on a project, I hardly ever create branches, only when I’m experimenting or if I’m adding some major feature that might break something else in my code.
5. When project is done. I log into my production server via SSH and just do git clone, there are services that automatically sync your repo to your server with each push, but you have to host your repo in order to do this. You can also create CRON job that runs every so often as well. But for me logging into my server takes few minutes so not a big deal.

Email me [email protected] I’ll send you link to a video from my Google Drive account about Git Workflow.

[Author]

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