I spent the week or so building out a sandbox site for the day job. This is NOT normally something that takes this long, but since I didn't have an available backup server, or budget, or any tools to automate any part of this, it did.
So, I had to cobble the fucking thing together using a spare hosting account I had laying around, and glue all of the frameworks, databases, and plug-in modules by hand. While doing other "useful" stuff, obviously.
Today, I got it finished to the point where bugs we started seeing on the production site were also being replicated on the sandbox. Success! I was also able to find fixes for a few of these, and apply them to the company site.
I took a minute to grab the boss and explain what a neat thing we now had: here's a place where I can test out patches to things without fucking up the company website! This is a Good Thing because I don't pull my hair out trying to test things in production when our customers are, you know, using the site.
Naturally, 20 minutes after I showed him this, I nuked the thing into oblivion when an update patch went off the rails, and spent a half-hour restoring the damn thing.
But! That's what it's there for. If this thing blows up in the middle of the day, I don't have an office full of screaming lunatics and pissed off customers. We get to keep making money and everyone else can keep working.
I've been doing web stuff for over a decade, and this is only the second time I've worked with a development sandbox. If you ever wonder why most of the stuff on the internet sucks, this should be a big clue.
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