What's the test site?

The test site is used for development and testing of Voice features before they go live. It is a full copy of the live site and so contains a snapshot of all sites and user accounts that are available on the live site.

It therefore might not always work as expected! It might change or reboot unexpectedly, and not necessarily always be running.

Can I access the test site?

Yes you can, but you need to be aware of a few things before you do so:

  1. The test site is primarily for use by Voice Online Communities CIC for development and testing. And as such it may not always be available, and it may not always work as expected.
  2. Periodically we copy the database and content from the live site onto the test site, so that the test site has a snapshot of all sites and user accounts. This means that the content on the test site gets overwritten periodically, losing any changes on the test site.
  3. If your site or account is new, then it won't exist yet on the test site (because it won't have been copied over yet).
  4. The test site cannot send emails. So you can't use it for testing out email distribution from any site. Nor can you send a 'password reset', or confirm new accounts, etc.
  5. We cannot copy content from the test site to the live site. Use the test site as a sandbox to try things out, then make the changes on the live site as usual.

How do I access the test site?

First, read and understand the above notices. In particular note that we copy data from the live site to the test site periodically, and so any changes you make on the test site may be overwritten without notice.

To access the site, put :4430 on the end of the hostname. So for most sites this means you use:

https://e-voice.org.uk:4430/

Or for a specific site it looks lke this:

https://e-voice.org.uk:4430/demosite/

You can log into the test site with the same user account as the live site.

And if I have a custom domain?

If you have your own domain, then adding :4430 to the domain should work for you too, something like:

https://www.example.com:4430/ (of course this is just an example so use your own domain name here!)

Note that if you use CloudFlare or another proxy or firewall service on your custom domain then they probably block port 4430. In which case you can try temporarily switching off their proxy by going into "DNS Only" mode in their settings and try again. The key is that you need to access the Voice servers directly on port 4430, and not any proxy service that may be running in front of it.

Help!?

Any questions relating to the test site should be sent to admin@e-voice.org.uk