Greetings,

I've been given the task to rework our website, and I had the idea to create a duplicate version of the site that would be invisible to our clients by setting all access privileges to Admin. I would make all the changes to the site in the duplicate, configure the access privileges, then make it the active site.

My issue is as follows. How do I make it the active site. Right now, no matter what I do, the login always leads to the old site.

Thanks for any help you can provide.
Techwriter

--- (Edited on 7/14/2008 9:06 am [GMT-0500] by techwriter) ---

I think you would find it a lot easier to refactor an entire site by creating a new development site, exporting/importing the database and copying over the uploads from /data/domains/<domain_name>/public/uploads to your new dev site.

1. create a new development site.
2. export/import the database
3. copy over the uploads from /data/domains/<domain_name>/public/uploads  to the new dev site

My question is, can you do all of these tasks using the Web GUI interface? IT has their claws on the server, and the program files, so I would need to make a convincing case to get access to them.

This would make it a lot easier because your development is completely separate, all operations and functions of the site would work and you could do a full release once you're done.

Could I do this on the same server using the same Web GUI program installation as the existing site?

To release, you could just put up a maintenance page,

I do this by creating a regular page layout with /Home as the URL?

archive the current version of your site,

remove and copy over the uploads (/data/domains/<domain_name>/public/uploads) and export/import the database.

It seems to me that I would need two versions of Web GUI running in order to do this, correct?

You will want to change settings either before or after the export/import of the database. I've done it both ways without issue.

What settings are you refferring to?

Once you're happy, pull down the maintenance page and test. Additionally, you could use a staging site instance to test the release process before doing it on production.

Kind regards,

Diona

Easier is a relative term.

Would you happen to know how to change the /Home pages, so that the Login page links to the new site? 

--- (Edited on 7/15/2008 8:09 am [GMT-0500] by techwriter) ---

you can edit the login template (admin console->settings->authentication->login template), placing a link around the submit button:

<td class="tableData"><a href="url of your duplicate site"><tmpl_var login.form.submit></a></td>

make sure that you use a copy of the template and edit the copy instead of editing the original

--- (Edited on 7/20/2008 8:21 pm [GMT+0200] by bartjol) ---