Suggestions for setting up Prototype site

We have designed a bunch of snazzy new templates for my client’s plain-jane site and now I am looking for suggestions as to how best to privately show my client the new look, in as complete a form as possible, before it goes live. Any suggestions as to how best to do this? Do I duplicate all the content and load in the new templates on the duplicated pages? I want to make the process as smooth as possible.

Thanks

Have the site offline (Configuration setting), and make him a temporary manager login. Logged in managers can see the site even if it’s offline.

Thanks, good idea.

My main issue is that the site right now is a working site that has about 50 pages, all using the old templates. I want the client to see how the site will work and look when the new templates are applied. However, I don’t want to go public with this until everything is approved. My thinking now is to simply duplicate all the pages I have in the Manager, apply the new templates and have the client view them. Then, when I’ve got everything approved, go and apply the new templates to the working pages (on a late Friday night just in case I screw up)

you could just copy the modx installation to another folder on your server and change the settings so that it uses another database. Then you’ll have a separate copy running where you can show the new site

Great advice. Thanks! For now, the duplicate folders and page with ID numbers is working OK.

Copying the ModX site to another folder sounds like a good option for the future. I’m not sure how i would then transfer the new prototype site to the original ModX site. I suppose i would have to copy the database over somehow.

Could you use a template changer plugin, where the user can view the same site with the multiple templates?

The documentation explains how to move your site from one to another installation:
http://modxcms.com/moving-sites-to-new-servers.html

The template changer plugin sounds like a cool idea. I imagine this would work by specifying alternate templates for each page and then having some easy way to globally switch templates to the next set? That would be REALLY slick.