Pull / sync / download changes from Kinsta live to imported site

What is the easiest way to pull / sync / download changes made in the Kinsta live environment once the site has been imported locally? I was expecting to see a ‘Pull from live’ button in the interface but can’t currently see one! The expected behaviour would be that this would wipe and replace the local environment.

This would be helpful in the case where the local environment hasn’t been used for a while and has become stale or a destructive change has been made locally creating the need to reset to the good live version.

Am I missing something or do I need to make a feature request?

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Hey @jamesgreenblue :wave: , Thanks for your question!

In the current version (v1.0.x) you can the following:

  1. delete site from DevKinsta
  2. click on Create new site
  3. choose “Import from Kinsta”
  4. select your live environment

We’ll improve this sync flow soon. “Pull from live” would be a great feature :slight_smile:

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Thanks for clarifying @peterkota – is it possible to move this post to the feature requests forum?

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@jamesgreenblue sure :slight_smile:

@michael can you help us move it to feature request section?

Great idea! I’ve gone ahead and moved this to feature requests. We’ll let you know if we end up implementing this.

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+1
this desperately needed

This would be super useful to have (with the option of selecting to pull from live or staging).

I was a little surprised to find this feature missing. Really slowing down the developer workflow when collaborating with multiple developers. Desperately need this one.

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Going to join the chorus of folks asking for this feature. Without it, collaboration with other devs is fairly cumbersome. Deleting and reimporting the site whenever you need to sync with your team is brutal. Would love to see feature this sooner than later!

+1 Would love to see this feature added.

+1 I was surprised by this as well. DevKinsta is great so far. But I’ve been used Pantheon’s LocalDev tool with a bunch of sites that I manage on that platform so I’m used having this feature.

I really feel like it’s an essential piece that’s missing. The idea being less to accommodate developing locally (there are other tools for that), and more to facilitate a workflow for a team has both content and development needs.

The workflow that a good portion of the marketing and development community has grown used to (for good reason) requires at least 3 separate environments**. This ensures that code, QA, and data are managed independently which allows you to keep data in tact while making necessary code changes, then testing those changes with a team.

**Keeping the sandbox for code changes locally, the QA environment for approval in staging, and the source of truth for content/data on the live site (in one place).

One more thing. I am new to Kinsta and am excited to see if this is the platform for me. But the terms pull and push imply use of git.

I know that deeper git integration is on it’s way per the documentation. But again, full use of version control in all environments is not what I’d call a “nice to have”, they are essential. Especially on a premium platform.

Welcome to DevKinsta @timwebdev and appreciate the feedback here!

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You’re welcome! I’m glad to be here. Again, this is my first time working with Kinsta and so far, we are really happy. I built a very minimal theme (vanilla WP, not headless) with hopes that we could increase our score with Google’s Core Web Vitals. We are moving hosting to Kinsta to double down on that. The results have been amazing!

Another thought that may go without saying is, on top of the ability to push and pull environments, having the ability to pull and push different elements of the environment has been really helpful for me on other platforms and using git in general.

At this stage, it looks like you have to pull and push (sometimes into brand new instances of each environment) the ENTIRE site - code, files, and data. And that brings me to my additional request:

The ability to push code only without overwriting data/content, images, etc.

That would be a major step forward for DevKinsta, taking it from “this is a tool for people who PREFER to work locally” to “this is a tool for people who want a reliable system for teams that require keeping data in tact and testing code changes safely and with best practices in mind.

So it’s been a little over and a year now and it doesn’t appear this feature exist yet? Or am I missing something? I’m also new to DevKinsta (only reason I’m using it is for a freelance project that was already setup on it), and while impressed with some features of it, it’s still lagging behind Pantheon in terms of Developer Experience.

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Need this pull live site feature!