Developing a new wordpress site and then migrating it over to replace an oldsite

Hi guy

I have an old site in HTML and would really like to move it over onto wordpress, have look at some of the html to wordpress converters, but I don’t really want the code to just be copyied as its an old site and what it all to be up to date, and not copy the older code across and that seems to be what most of the coverters do.

Whats the best way to do this ? I thought about developing the site on another temporary url getting it how I like it and then moving it over to replace my HTML site? but not sure how hard it is to do this ?

As I don’t want to have to take my html site down while I build a new wordpress site, am I missing something ? is there an easier way?

Jj