Version Control for Magento mainly for the looks

Question

We have a Magento webshop version 1.9.2, and I am trying to achieve the following scenario, please advice on the best way to achieve this:

Having a local test environment, connected to a version control such as Github such that we can go backward and forward with the changes made, two things are being tried: - changing and editing the layout of the webshop, that is the looks and all the things done by the cms admin which later is stored into the database. - Installing and playing around with different extensions(We do not develope any modules or extensions ourself, we just use what is out there).

What is the best solution for such a quest?

Answer 1

Using source control is by far the best way there are many different approaches you can take it to handle where to revert to but I would suggest that you set up using a gitflow type workflow.

https://www.atlassian.com/git/tutorials/comparing-workflows/centralized-workflow

So you would have a branch: master The master branch would be come the changes you are happy with - in theory it would represent the live production server (once you go live at least).

Then for each change or idea you have you would create a new branch from master or a develop branch as an alternative.

git branch feature/homepage-view-a
git checkout feature/homepage-view-a

Now you can do your changes as you see fit, isolated in this feature/homepage-view-a branch.

If you decide it isnt what you want you can simply go back to master and start a new branch eg:

git branch feature/homepage-view-b
git checkout feature/homepage-view-b

Finally, when you are satisfied that the branch represents the change you are happy with you would merge this back into master:

git checkout master
git merge feature/homepage-view-b

At this point, master branch now represents your approved homepage-view-b changes and you can move onto your next design change.