How to setup/create a cms sandbox from an existing production site

[craftsmannerd]

Hello -

We have a production system up and running - Marketing, CRM, and CMS.Now, what I would like to do if possible is to sync/copy our production CMS down to a sandbox.  

Once it is down in the "sandbox" can we then sync back upstrem changes we have made to production and get them published?

[GiantFocal]

Just like @Anton mentioned, what you're looking for is Content Staging, which is available for Content Hub Professional and Enterprise.

You can stage live pages, make edits, and swap themes or templates without affecting your current live pages. You can also easily create new pages in Content Staging and publish them back to production.

You can complete all page creation, editing, QA, and approval in Staging. When everything is ready, you can launch all the pages at once. HubSpot handles all the processes, such as creating 301 redirects for page URL changes, updating hyperlinks and navigations to point to the new pages, and maintaining all original page analytics.

Best regards,

Abraham Ernesto

[Anton · Accepted solution]

Hi @craftsmannerd, if you're reffering to the Enterprise "Sandbox" function - from my experience - it's not really meant for CMS sandboxing work. 

If you're looking for a certain goal like relaunching your website, I'd recommend to use the content staging function in your live portal. 

If you're just starting with something like developing a new theme - it might be benefitial to do this in a free standalone CMS sandbox*.

The main benefit of content staging is, that it can be seperated from the live pages. You can clone existing pages to staging, change everything(content, templates, forms, ctas, navigations...) and once you're happy, push it to live and replace the existing live page with the staged one. There are a few things to keep in mind like global partials(they still will have the same content) before jumping straight into staging if you're already working on a new website - but if you're redoing everything, the staging environment can be a time saver.

With a CMS sandbox* it's a bit different. Those sandboxes are great if you're just starting with something like theme and module development. They're also great if you're using local development.

If you should build pages in the sandbox you could technically move them via the pages API to the live portal- but - I recommend to use content staging. It's easier, safer and saves you a lot of time and potential headaches

Another possible solution if you're looking for a theme/module sandbox like solution would be: creating a 

GitHub action/integration. But please keep in mind that it's recommended only for theme and module code. Keeping pages, emails and such in GitHub is a bad practise

best, 

Anton