Redesigning a site while keeping existing site active

  • Hi – I am redesigning a website in the subdirectory of an existing site while keeping the existing site running. The existing site is a standard WP site. The new site will include Buddypress and bbpress plugins.

    I would like to populate the new site with existing content and start organizing it. I have exported the existing content to an XML file.

    A couple of questions before I import:
    1 – Will creating a copy of the content pose problems for the existing site?
    2 – Is there a better way to do this?

    Thank you.

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)

  • Hi, runamuck, & welcome. Great username, btw! This is precisely what I’ve done while building lots of sites. You will, of course, need to make sure you don’t exceed the bandwidth &/or disk space limitations imposed by your hosting company. As long as your .htaccess file is pretty standard, i.e., no weird redirects or such, you should be just fine.

    Thread Starter runamuck

    (@runamuck)

    Thanks Jackie!

    This is an especially large site with high traffic so just wanted to double-check.

    Also, what’s the best way to redirect the URL once the new website is done? Should I just redirect the URL in Settings? I don’t want to break any existing links. I haven’t done this is a while…

    Thanks!

    See:

    https://codex.www.ads-software.com/Giving_WordPress_Its_Own_Directory#Using_a_pre-existing_subdirectory_install

    Thread Starter runamuck

    (@runamuck)

    Thanks WPyogi!

    Ok, the existing/current WordPress site (SSM.com) is in a subdirectory of the root directory.

    I am redesigning in a newly created subdirectory of SSM.com (SSM/newSSM.com).

    Do I do the same thing in this case?

    Yep.

    Thread Starter runamuck

    (@runamuck)

    So what should I do with the old WP site? Archive it? And should I do that first before redirecting?

    Hi, runamuck. I actually keep it around for a bit till I’m very certain I don’t need anything–then I just delete it. Just to make @#$% sure, you might wish to back the site up to your local machine prior to the deletion, just in case, but I find if I don’t need anything for about a week or 2, especially having imported content, etc., it’s ok to just nuke it. Truth is, the content, i.e., posts, pages, etc., is in your database anyway, so what you need would be stuff like images, etc., which would generally be in your wp-content/uploads folder. If you’ve already transferred those to the new site, then you’re likely good to delete the old one soon after the new 1 is up & running. If you have content elsewhere, as I do w/several of my sites, then, of course, be sure that’s accounted for. Sometimes a checklist of where important content resides can avoid costly mistakes. Better to take a bit of time doing something like that, IMO, than to spend time restoring something that was accidentally deleted.

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)
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