I am going to be revamping my website with a new layout, so I’ll need to bring the site "offline" to make sure things look alright with the new code.
However, I use scripts like PPP, which means I have to use another browser (in this case Opera9, I’m using Firefox2 to type this post) --- and only a Admin account can see the website when it’s put offline.
Is it possible to just rename index.php to something like index2.php, and have it work fine (having index.php be a "Site Under Maintenance..."-type message), or would I have to use some sort of redirect script to move everyone to index.htm?
If I had to do the latter option, does anyone know of a script to run on the server to do that?
You don’t need to take your site offline at all to do that. Just create yourself a new ’development’ folder, protect this with a development user and document group so that only you can see it, copy some key documents into there and make temporary copies of any templates, snippets etcetera you want to alter. While you are working on the development section the public can have normal access to the rest of the site. Once you are satisfied you just swap over the new templates to the real site (and any altered snippets) and away you go!
If you really do need to have the site offline for a while use the MODx offline feature. Create an offline page and set the Site unavailable page: to it’s ID and set the Site status to offline (tools >> configuration >>site tab). Make and use a separate template for that page if you want...
