Why Define Projects for Staging?
You create projects for Commerce Server Staging (CSS) to define the specific Web site assets that you want to update on other servers, to schedule when to move the content, and to specify a source and destination for the deployment.
You can create staging projects for Web content (files on the Web server) or business data (databases and tables) using the project dialog box, or by using the New Project Wizard. The projects do not contain the assets to deploy, only the location of those assets and other project parameters, such as the source directory, destination server, and destination directory. The New Project Wizard simplifies defining a project for deploying site updates.
For a staging deployment to succeed, the project must exist on the source server and any destination servers. If the project does not exist on all the servers involved, CSS does not have the information that is required to complete the deployment, and will generate an error.
When you create a project with the New Project Wizard, CSS automatically creates the project on all the destination servers specified in the deployment. If you manually create or change a project by using the project dialog box, you must also manually create or change the project on all the destination servers.
An advantage of creating a project manually is that you can set advanced options that the New Project Wizard does not provide, such as specifying any assets to include or exclude from a deployment or specifying an e-mail address for staging notifications (success or failure). You can create a project first with the New Project Wizard, and then set the advanced options later from the Project Properties dialog box.
See Also
Other Resources
Why Define Routes for Staging?