Hi,

After a lot of research, I’ve decided to use EE on a new website job (non-profit). The design is ready, CSS is in line,  but the website will be so big and will require a lot of content from multiple users prior to its release 1-2 months down the road.

Question: What’s the best way to approach this? Can EE be installed on the web, temporarily hidden while under development, then released?

If that’s not an option, how about offline building, and if so, what’s the best option for a Mac user?

Other Important Info: The current website is using ASP, and I will have to pull content from those pages during the development of the website.

Links or ideas on how to best approach this is much appreciated!

Thanks,

Daniel

Hey, Daniel -

I’m still building my first EE site (non-profit too), and it sits in the same place my old site does. I changed the name of the home page to something other than index.php. When visitors hit the site, my old index.php pops up as the home page, and they never see the EE stuff. When I want to test the site, I just point the browser to the renamed EE home page. It’s like alternate dimensions on separate vibrational planes; they’re intermingled, but unless you know the secret gateway from one to the other you don’t see the stuff on the other.

All the best,
Nathan

To add to what Nathan said you can turn EE “off”. When EE is “off” only the Super-Admin (and any other member groups that you’ve specifically given permissions too) can see the EE site. You can drop a bit of javascript or htaccess code to redirect the offline template back to the live site. This way there is zero chance anybody stumbles onto your site while in development and making it “live” is literally just a couple clicks to turn EE back on.

You can find this setting in Admin—> System Preferences—> General Configuration

That’s perfect. I thought I remember reading something about turning EE “off”, but that’s great. Thanks for the help!

Daniel