Plan a deployment

Optimizely is a scalable platform that you can deploy in many ways: on a single server, virtual machines, web farm network clusters, or in a cloud-based or locally hosted environment.

Plan and prepare

There are many good approaches for website development, from classic to iterative. How you plan, build, design, integrate, test, and deliver your solutions relies on approaches to standardizing your process to make it easy to maintain and enhance your solutions.

Development usually occurs on a developer workstation, and the solution is then deployed to a test environment. After successful testing, the solution is deployed to a live production web server.

You should coordinate your requirements, deployment architecture, systems integration needs, and infrastructure upfront. Good planning and preparation saves a lot of time and effort over the life of a website.

Before you deploy a website, consider the following:

• What preparations do you need?
• What technical aspects must be considered during development?
  • How should you build content?
  • How is the acceptance testing done?
• Should you migrate content from an existing website or create a website from scratch?
• What features do you want to implement on the website?
• How will you host and maintain the website: on-premises or using a cloud-based solution?

See also the System requirements for Optimizely when planning your implementation.

Develop

Your solution's primary development strongly focuses on requirements and iterative delivery, with frequent communication with end users and customers. The more you communicate and show progress during this phase, the more solid your efforts and results are as you move into integration and testing.

Test

After you complete core development, thoroughly test and verify your system, including the public-facing portion, the business logic you have developed, the back-end systems, and your interfaces with third-party systems and controls. Also, test your solution in conjunction with the expected business processes and operational support teams that are operating and managing the solution.

Deploy

Deploying an Optimizely solution requires planning and timing to roll out your solution to a live or production environment to ensure your customer's experience is good. Your deployment may take different forms, such as a cut-over from an existing system or the launch of your site from a system.

Maintain

The final stage is ongoing maintenance, enhancements, and improvements that are part of growing and supporting your Optimizely solution.