susannahb

Thanks all for the replies!

@anevins: I would rather not use a local site for development because it makes it more difficult more my client to view the work periodically and provide feedback on the design.
Could you specify on why I would be losing the SEO? Or point me to where I can read more on this?

@jdembowski, thanks for moving this! My apologies for picking the wrong forum!

@binarywc, thanks for your modification! Much appreciated! I have a couple of questions:
Could I use a subdomain of the existing domain for development or would this create a whole other set of problems?
When I copy the dev site over to the live site, what happens with the live site? Would I not be overwriting it?

What I would like to avoid is the following (using fictitious example):

Site url: healthcareinpictures.com
When googling ‘healthcare pictures’, Google returns with ‘healthcareinpictures.com’, ‘healthcareinpictures.com/treatment’, ‘healthcareinpictures.com/contact’.
These then point to the live site. Once the dev site is online, I’m assuming that Google will return with the same links. That would be fine, but I want to make sure they redirect to the correct pages and not return a 404 error. So that /contact redirects to the new contact page and /treatment redirects to the new homepage since in the new site that page will be dropped.

Will modifying the HTACCESS of the live site accomplish this and not be overwritten when the dev site is copied to the live server?

Thanks to all for the help!

Hi,

This tutorial recently helped me to create a custom widget area. Maybe it will help you as well ??

https://smallenvelop.com/create-widget-area-in-wordpress-theme/

Good luck!