The module is designed to automate the process of initial site configuration and preparation of a test outline for company employees. It provides centralized management of settings, configurations, and access to test environments, which simplifies and speeds up the process of implementing and testing new features and changes on the site.

Features of manual creation of site demos

For the marketplace to work properly, you need to create at least three, and most likely, significantly more versions of the site.: 

• for testing updates,
• for design development,
• for updating modules for the marketplace,
• for training new employees, etc. 

It turns out that you have to create test and demo sites quite often. And each time it takes a very long time. To understand how difficult this is, let's look at the stages of preparing a test site.

Working with accounts: disabling and deleting buyers, sellers, administrators

There are usually 2-3 sellers on the test circuit, created specifically for testing. They already have customized products, warehouses, warehouse availability regions, and shipping methods that can be tested.

It is necessary to massively disable unnecessary sellers so that they do not interfere, and include the necessary ones that were created specifically for testing. At the same time, you should disable the administrators of sellers and buyers.

With these settings, there is a high probability of error. For example, one incorrect click and the user will receive a notification that his profile has been disabled. This can be very frustrating, especially if such notifications are sent to all customers, who may be 20, 30 thousand, or much more.

Setting up User Groups

A separate point is setting up user groups for administrators of testers and buyers on whom these tests are conducted. Sometimes, for tests, it is necessary to enable extended site access rights, which cannot be given to either buyers or seller's administrators on the working version of the site. 

Removing unnecessary information

Mass deletion of orders and products is also necessary., features, feature options, options, filters, and the like. And a working, popular marketplace can have tens of thousands of characteristics, an unimaginable number of options for characteristics, hundreds of thousands of products, etc. And it will take hours until you delete all this manually. 

Working with modules

There are a number of modules that need to be disabled when preparing the demo. Payment modules are most often disabled, as the test environment for payment systems is created separately from the main circuit and is tested using other private access keys. Therefore, at a minimum, you just need to disable the module so that it does not interfere with work and transactions do not occur. 

It is also necessary to reconfigure the prefixes for transport companies so that orders created through modules, such as "Delivery PRO PLUS", do not match the combat ones and do not cause errors.

When placing an order on the website, an order is automatically generated on the ApiShip website. Naturally, each order on the marketplace is assigned a unique number. However, the order numbers on your two sites may match. This will cause an error when placing an order on the ApiShip side. To avoid this, we recommend that you set different prefixes to the order number in the settings of the "Delivery PRO PLUS" module for different sites. This will avoid repetition in the order numbering. 

Do not forget to add the necessary email addresses to the settings of the "Duplicate emails" module for testing the mailing list. This will allow you to track all notifications that leave the site to buyers, sellers, and administrators. 

What else is important not to forget

Well, there are some very small things that may take a little time, but it's important not to forget about them: rename domains, clear the site CACHE, load the favicon, close the showcase. The total setup time can take well over a day. 

To simplify and speed up this process, we have created the initial site configuration module. 

Module functionality

Our module greatly simplifies the process, reducing it from a few hours to a single click. 

Everything is very simple and clear. A few minutes of pre-settings, and then one click, and the new test site is ready. The settings are simple and straightforward: 

Initial site setup: change the name and domains, download the favicon, clear the CACHE. 

• Disabling and/or deleting buyers, sellers, and administrators: you can turn off all accounts and stores en masse, or you can leave those you plan to work with enabled. 
• Setting up user groups: Setting up privileges for sellers, administrators, and buyers. 
• Removing unnecessary information: You don't have to do it manually, you just specify what to do with each type of information: orders, products, specifications, feature options, options, and so on. 
• Configuring modules: disabling unnecessary modules, making changes to the necessary module settings. This includes replacing the prefix in the delivery module and adding email addresses to the "Duplicate Emails" module.

 After creating a copy of the working site and deploying it on the demo, the configuration will be carried out automatically, without your participation, with a click of a button or by CRON. It is enough to start the automatic process, and in a few seconds the site will be ready to work.