PEST

PEST stands for Pretty Excellent Synchronization Tool. PEST enables City staff to publish web pages from the City's test server (w3.cabq.gov) to the City's public server (www.cabq.gov).

This service is only available on the City's network.
Only City employees are given PEST access.

Go to PEST>>

PEST Frequently Asked Questions

What is PEST?
PEST is the City's new synchronization tool for publishing from the City's staging server (w3.cabq.gov) to the City's live server (www.cabq.gov).

PEST is created and maintained by the City of Albuquerque Information Systems Division (ISD). ISD issues usernames and passwords for both this application and access to w3.cabq.gov. City web pages are created and published to the test server using Macromedia Contribute; pages are then published from the test server to the public server using PEST. PEST was first launched to the Web Team on 8/17/04.

PEST is a web application that lives on w3.cabq.gov and acts as a middle-man between the user and the production server. It is responsible for making sure that the right files get copied between test and productions to keep everything in step.

PEST works at the directory level – you can only publish whole directories. Usually this is not a problem because PEST is smart enough to only move the files on w3.cabq.gov that are newer than the same files on www.cabq.gov, and will delete files on www.cabq.gov that have been already deleted from w3.cabq.gov. Essentially, PEST helps created a mirror image of w3.cabq.gov and www.cabq.gov.

How Does PEST Work with Contribute?
PEST is designed to work together with the web publishing software Macromedia Contribute. Here is a brief overview of the process required to publish a web page with Contribute:

1. Surf to the page to be edited
2. Place the page in edit mode (this "checks out" the page in the same way that you check out a book from the library)
3. Make changes to the page
4. Save the page (also known as "publishing"). This checks the page in again so that someone else can edit it. (Other options are to save a page as a draft, or submit for review prior to publishing.)

How Do I Publish Using PEST?

1. Go to PEST
2. Enter your PEST username and password
3. Click Publish Files
4. Identify the files you wish to publish
5. Click Publish

Why do we need PEST?
The City was faced with some issues that needed to be addressed with a new solution. These issues included:

• Currently it is not possible to publish directly from the test site to the production site.
• The City's new Contribute software allows the user to publish web pages directly to the server (as opposed to saving the page to the user's c:\ drive and then publishing to the server). Publishing directly to the server reduces the chances of version-control problems. Working this way, however, means that any changes to a web page need to be done twice: once on the staging server and again on the live server. Not only is this cumbersome and time consuming for users, but the chances are that the production server would soon get out of step with the staging server.
• Connecting to multiple servers means remembering multiple usernames and passwords. These can be a pain to remember and can be a source of errors when trying to do things quickly.
• Any solution needs to be compatible with Dreamweaver's check in/check out function
• The web team wishes to have a staging server that truly serves as a replica of the live server

What are the benefits of PEST?
Pest will:

• Make sure that out staging server is an exact replica of our live server
• Improve the staging/test environment
• Include the opportunity to maintain archived versions of pages
• Reduce the labor and likelihood for errors associated with maintaining various usernames and passwords.