Synchronizing content between QA and live author

[#1]

We've had a question from the content editors that I can't find a solution for.

When creating test content, they are currently doing this on the live environment. This is because a lot of the customers reviewing the test content don't have access to the author so can only see it once it has been published. In addition to this, the test content cannot be created on the QA environment because the content editors would then need to rebuild the page in live once it has been approved.

They are asking if there's a way for them to create the content on the QA environment to test with then copy across to the live author.

I'm aware that the content could be packaged up and copied across but the content editors don't have access to this part of the CMS. As a development/platform team, we would also prefer to not be burdened by regular requests to do this.

Is there any other way for content to be created on a QA author then synchronized or pushed to the live author without having to use content packages?

[#2]

I don't see a way of doing what you want without creating a package in QA's Package Manager and scheduling a deploy to the Live server, but this can be catastrofic if you send all files from your `content` package. It could potentially overwrite content that is in production.

You could create a package containing only the individual pages you want, but it would give you some headache because you also need to send policies, images, templates, styles (and not only pages).

The way we do here is that authors create content directly in Production Server.

Then, time to time we (maybe once a month) we do a production copy from Live to QA.