Recreating an existing site?

Hello,

I want to use MODx for a number of different projects. One of them is recreating an existing site in MODx, to make it easier for the site manager to edit/add content. My question: how can I do this without disturbing the existing site? Ideally, I’d like to use the same domain and develop the MODx version alongside the existing site, but I don’t see how this is possible if I use any of the same page names. Any ideas?

Thanks!

Utz

Start with MODx installed in a subfolder, like http://mysite.com/modx/ ... convert your template and content and then when ready move it up to the site root, re-run the installer in upgrade mode and correct any path in the config... done!

If you don’t have an existing assets, manager, or index.php file you can install MODx (without FURLs) in your site root and your existing site will not be affected. When you’r done, you just rename your index.html file to something else and MODx will take over.

In fact, sometimes it’s even easier than that... If your existing site is a set of html files, I’ve found that you can do a complete install of MODx and turn friendly URLs on. Then you can go about recreating each file in MODx and publishing them. On all of the servers I’ve used, the actual html files will take precedence over the MODx documents, so as long as you have a news.html file on your site the MODx document with the same alias won’t show up. But as soon as you delete the old news.html file, the MODx version will appear.

The one caveat is that your old site can’t have an index.php file (since MODx needs to install its own). If it does, you can rename the old one and set the DirectoryIndex in .htaccess to load the renamed file instead when no specific page is loaded. Or you can just make the home page the first thing that you recreate in MODx.

If you’re going to take a while to make the change, then I also recommend setting MODx to not make the site public (which will allow you to view it when logged into the Manager, but everyone else will get your offline message). You can also make your offline message forward to your old site’s home page just in case if you like. Usually I can get a site transferred to MODx in the space of a few hours, so I just make my offline message something generic about performing maintenance.

Thanks! Sounds simple enough. Much appreciated!