In the previous chapter, we obtained our first glimpse of the ever-present and important settings of php.ini and .htaccess. From what we saw, intrusion detection plays a big part in our server world today, as multiple threats keep arriving almost daily.

So, along with a solid environment, having a testing environment is just as critical to succeed. In this chapter, you will learn how to set up your test and development area. "Why do I need this?" you may ask. Think about a situation where a new extension has been released, but not thoroughly tested, or when you want to add a new feature to your site. Making these changes on a production system could be devastating. If you made a mistake, or the extension caused a conflict, an outage could occur.

With a test environment, you will have a fully functional "copy" of your site, enabling you to test and develop safely. To accomplish this, we will cover the following topics to give you a professional method to have...