site redesign procedure

Greetings ModXperts,
I have a few questions on people’s preferred methods for site redesigns. I’ve been given the task of redesigning a fairly large website and there’s so many ways to take it, I wanted to ask advice from the pro’s.

If i don’t want to disrupt anything until the new site is ready for launch, should i develop it on a WAMP? What sort of implications does that have as far as link path’s go, what steps would have to be taken to ensure a clean launch? i have very little experience with WAMP’s. When I’m ready to launch, do I copy the database, upload everything in my /www/ and I’m good to go? Something tells me it’s not that easy...

Would it make more sense to develop in a /dev/ folder on the current site? that way I know all paths will be correct and when I’m ready for launch I think I can just re-map the domain to that folder (i.e. from /www/ to www/dev/) and have it be fine. Trouble is I’m technically only redoing half the site and I’d still need to link to content in that /www/ folder, would it possible to move the /dev/ contents into the /www/ and still keep everything performing right? Meaning, if I install ModX to that /dev/ folder and make the whole new site then just essentially take everything in dev and put it in the home directory, is that all going to work? ( I would obviously have to change .htaccess, but is that all?)

As usual, I’m probably complicating an easy problem to solve- but I wanted to see how you guys redesign sites and what your preferred course of action is...

Thanks in advance for any help/insight/advice!

I think you’re being wise in considering the options before diving into the project.

You’ll want to look at this: http://modxcms.com/moving-sites-to-new-servers.html. It’s based on the concept of developing locally and then moving the site to a remote server.

As for the redesign, it depends, first, on whether the old site is a MODx site. I’m assuming no, since we’re in MODx 101 .

In that case you can either:

1. Port the site to MODx and then redesign it.
2. Redesign it first and then port it to MODx.
3. Just build it from scratch in MODx.

That decision would probably depend on how major the re-design is and how much time you have.

I would most likely install MODx locally, then build it from scratch with some cutting and pasting of content you want to keep, then copy it to the remote. Some people recommend installing the MODx demo site -- if you do that, I’d recommend making that a separate MODx install so you can just use it for reference and ideas on how to do things.

I’m curious to see what others have to say on this topic.

Thanks for the advice, I have a feeling there will be a fair bit more to say on this topic, I look forward to hearing people’s opinions.

That link makes it seem like XAMPP might be the way to go, but I feel like that may be more of a headache than some of the alternatives.

The site I’m redesigning is pretty large- at least 800 pages. My biggest question at this point is if I can develop the new site in a /dev/ folder, make sure robots is set to disallow that folder, then when complete just pull it into the main www folder and have it work swimmingly. I know I’d have to change .htaccess and base path but given that, do you guys think that would work?

That should work, though robots.txt would then point you where to look if someone wants to get a preview.

Most release versions of XAMPP have been pretty painless and have worked for MODx out of the box for me on Windows Vista Ultimate. I’ve never used LAMP, but when I first started with XAMPP, what I read suggested fewer headaches with XAMPP (on my platform, anyway).