Hi @darthelephant we have an entry for this in our FAQ here: FAQ | Strapi Documentation
But I’ll summarize it here:
Due to how Node.js works, in order for changes to take effect, that would require Node to restart the server. This could potentially cause downtime of your production service and likewise these changes should be tracked in some kind of source control.
Generally your “flow” of development would follow the following path:
- Development - Develop your Strapi application locally on your host machine, then push changes into source control
- Staging - Deploy changes from source control to a “production-like” environment for testing
- Production - If no other changes are needed, deploy into production
- Repeat as needed, it is recommended that you properly version and test your application as you go
At this time and in the future there is no plan to allow model creating or updating while in a production environment, and there is currently no plans to move model settings into the database. There are no known nor recommended workarounds for this.
Strapi deployments are closely coupled with source control and we strongly recommend that you do development locally, push that code into staging with atomic test data, then if everything looks good you deploy that code in production.