Thread

Hello,

I’m an EE newbie and working on a client site while keeping their current site running. My question is what is the easiest and safest way to work on a new EE site on a server that is currently hosting the old client’s site?

To keep the old site live while I build the EE site, I installed it in /ee/ at the server root. I’ve read that I can move the EE directory (e.g. to root) and then update the various paths. Is this the recommended way to make a site live while keeping an old one running until the new site is launched? I’ve thought about simply turning off the system in the CP, but I believe that would shut down the whole site, including the client’s live site, or would it?

Another question is can I simply redirect all the paths so the site is live (e.g. move index.php to root), while not moving the /ee/ directory? In other words, have the site’s base urls look like: domain.org/somepage instead of domain.org/ee/somepage while just keeping EE installed in /ee/?

I’m sorry if this question has already been answered, but I couldn’t find an answer directly addressing this.

Thanks very much for any advice or suggestions you can offer. I’m sure this simple, but I’m a little anxious about not losing any work I’ve done, and what to have the simplest urls I can while keeping the launch glitch-free.

Welcome to the ExpressionEngine forums, hwalker.

I’m an EE newbie and working on a client site while keeping their current site running. My question is what is the easiest and safest way to work on a new EE site on a server that is currently hosting the old client’s site?

hwalker, there are several different ways you can do this.

What I do (my workflow, not the only one 😊 ) is first figure out if the client’s site uses index.htm or index.php.

If they are using index.htm or index.html, I install into the root of the site.

If needed, I can make changes to an .htaccess file to make the index.html load first.

If they’re using index.php, I rename EE’s index.php to something like newindex.php. Then during the setup process, I use newindex.php instead of index.php.

When the site is ready to go, I rename newindex.php to index.php, and change the settings pointing to newindex.php

Does that help?

Hi Sue,

Thank you for your quick reply. Yes, sharing your method with me was helpful.

My client’s site is hosted on an IIS server and is using index.html. I tried your suggestions on a different test server and see that they will work for me, with the exception that I’ve already installed EE at /ee, so I’ll have to move it. After your post, I used a test server to move an EE install to the root, while keeping the current site live. After updating the path settings, I was able to have both sites up, with the EE site running off newindex.php per your suggestion and the old site as the default.

Since on my client’s server I can’t use .htaccess, I did a quick test and it appears that their server ignores index.php while index.html is there, so I think it’ll be easy to keep both sites up, then at launch delete the index.html file. 

Thanks very much for clarifying this! It seems to me that I’ll be able to replicate these steps on my client’s live site and (hopefully) make the launch a quick and painless process.

Cheers!

Welcome to the ExpressionEngine forums, hwalker.

I’m an EE newbie and working on a client site while keeping their current site running. My question is what is the easiest and safest way to work on a new EE site on a server that is currently hosting the old client’s site?

hwalker, there are several different ways you can do this.

What I do (my workflow, not the only one 😊 ) is first figure out if the client’s site uses index.htm or index.php.

If they are using index.htm or index.html, I install into the root of the site.

If needed, I can make changes to an .htaccess file to make the index.html load first.

If they’re using index.php, I rename EE’s index.php to something like newindex.php. Then during the setup process, I use newindex.php instead of index.php.

When the site is ready to go, I rename newindex.php to index.php, and change the settings pointing to newindex.php

Does that help?

hwalker:

Glad to hear you found a way to do this on IIS.  Closing the thread for now, but please don’t hesitate to open a new one if a problem comes up.

Thanks,

-greg