Audience: Web Ops Team and Web Working Group Members.
What: A guide for how to warn potential new site users about using WPEngine with admin and SFTP access.
We would like to set expectations when users request SFTP access, or request unapproved plugins or request 3rd party code changes to sites in our WPEngine development or staging environments. We need to confirm the section web site owner understands the following.
The user will not
- send test email or text messages from our servers
- use real member or donor data on our servers
The user understands that
- Only code written by the IS Web Ops agency can run on our WPEngine servers in production.
- Once the code is exported from our environment and hosted in a 3rd party environment the website administrator must
- manage updates (the CMS and plugins)
- manage users (adding, editing, removing when access is no longer required)
- train users
- have a qualified IT person to help them in the future
- be aware of the cost of maintaining a website and especially maintaining any custom development
- be aware of the reasons for using a child theme, as opposed to editing the parent theme
- be aware of the pros and cons of building plugins vs child themes
- Once the code is hosted in 3rd party environments and infrastructure IS web ops do not
- fix ANY bugs
- accept website back into our environments/infrastructure
- approve plugins or code written by 3rd parties
When you are ready to host the site yourself IS Web Ops can
- send a Zip of the files and database
- provide GitHub access, so their team can watch for code changes and keep their sites updated.