Hi All,
I am going to build an old static into a new SS site for a client of mine but i have not done this yet while keeping the current site live. I was wondering if there would be any problems if i were to build the "published" site in a subdir and transfer it over into the root dir (overwriting/removing the previous content) once everything is complete.

Do i need to install sapphire to the root and have the SS site in a sub dir? Do i need to change any backend settings once the site is in the root? Is there a better way of going about thsi that i'm not aware of? Any advice on this would be greatly appreciated. The more detail, the better.

I'll be working on the template until I hear more. Thanks in advance!
-Blake

EDIT: The reason for this is to have the client check the progress on the design remotely without disabling the current site, if anyone was confused...

A possible solution to your problem would be to create a new subdirectory under the current website. So i am going to pretend that you have called it "newsite". Now upload all the files to that directory and go to "thecurrentsite.com/newsite" and you should be greeted by the already familiar Silverstripe installer... go ahead and finish the installation as usual.

After that you can go on developing the site and you client should see steady progress as the dev process goes on. When you are done developing and you client is happy here's what you need to do

- Move all the file from the "newsite" folder into the root folder of the website.
- Next, delete or rename the current "index.htm or index.html" file from the old website.This is important because by default Apache web server is configured to serve those files.

- Finally and this is the most important part. Open the ".htaccess" file you moved from the "newsite" folder and edit the following lines

### SILVERSTRIPE START ###
.......
.......
......

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /newsite

.......
.....

to this

### SILVERSTRIPE START ###
.......
.......
......

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /

.......
.....

And thats all there is to it. Hope this helps. :)

Thanks L Boy! I'm gunna give it a go right... NOW! I'll let you know how it pans out.