Question

I operate a drupal 6 website for my business and it does just as I want.

Only I am planning a major update in which I will be changing the theme and most of my pages. I would like to know how I could basically change all the pages, but only publish the changes when I’m ready (if possible)?

I thought about creating a whole new Drupal website and then moving it to do my desired directory but then I would lose everything else in my database (like orders) and all my extensive settings which can not happen!

I would not like to make the ‘site off-line’ for maintainence either because the website is perfectly functional as it is and I need as much chance for visitors and publicity as possible!

So if any knows of a solution for my situation it would be much appriciated if you could tell me!

Thanks in Advance,

Andy

Answer 1

Is your site international? Have a look at your analytics – is there not a time of day when your site has significantly less, or even approaching zero, users? This will be much harder in an international site, but look at your stats and see if there is a regular slump when you can perform this update.

I would create the new site along side the existing, and when ready update the dns, or point the virtual host to the new folder and then copy the orders table (and anything else you need) to the new database as @jmkeyes suggested.