Easy way to create testing environment of SharePoint 2010 Application

Question

I want to create a test environment for SharePoint 2010 Application.

The steps I will follow are.

1. Backup development Application content DB.
2. Create a new site in Testing environment and replace its DB by development DB.
3. Deploy all WSP.

Will it work ?

Answer 1

There is another way also,

Create the same site with the same template as their on your development environment.

Take the library files I mean copy from Site Assets, Style Library, Site Pages & Master pages by opening it with Internet Explorer from development environment & paste it to testing environment.

Master Pages you need to take by mapping your local machine to network drive since we do not have direct rights to that pages. You need to open up from there and copy it from master page gallery of development and paste it to your testing site master page gallery.

And lastly you need to take the stp's of the sharepoint lists and libraries from development environment and upload it to the testing environment.