Rebuild Site while keeping current site live

Hello all,

First of all, I have read through countless other threads others have started that are related to this situation; however, I have not yet found a solution.

I do not simply want to see how a new theme would look on my site. I want to switch to a new theme, configure this theme, and modify the structure of my website to improve SEO. In order to do this, I was planning on installing wordpress on another domain I own under the same hosting account, and then export my existing wordpress installation (using tools>export), and then upload that .xml file into my fresh wordpress shell on the “test” domain. I would then reconfigure everything (change the theme, modify categories, add functionality to the website, etc), after which I would export from the “test” domain and import back into my original domain, thus creating a seamless experience for my customers. Some of these changes might create the need for redirects, which I haven’t decided if I would do on the test domain or new domain once I have migrated back to my real domain.

I have tried importing the .xml file into the new installation of wordpress, only to get a blank white screen and no changes to the site.

When I try to re-upload the .xml file a second time, I get error messages telling me that the media already exists in the folder.

As I plan on making changes to the site while in development, I don’t think one of the “theme test drive” plugins is applicable in this case.

I’m not a “web developer”, but I do have experience in building basic wordpress sites and using ftp to do uploads. I do minor customizations on themes as well. That being said, I’m not an expert, and a suggestion such as “just set up a virtual server and transfer your files there and then migrate back” isn’t really helpful, as I’m unsure of how exactly to do that. I would REALLY appreciate if someone on here could give me step-by-step instructions on the best way to accomplish this task. Thank you in advance for helping out a fellow wordpresser!!!