[Solved] Love it! But time for some professional guidance

[L84DNR]

Running 1.3.1

I came across CMS MS a few months ago.  I thought to myself this would be awesome for the college alumni club I help out with their website.  So, not knowing very much about CMS MS I downloaded it and installed in to a sub folder on my personal web host.  Copied some data form their existing site for content, put in a few modules, tweaked some CSS and next thing you know the site is just what they wanted and I look like I know what the heck I'm doing   ;)

I'm okay with creating another site from scratch, practice makes perfect right?  I would copy the templates however.  The new CMS MS will be on a completely different environment, server and on a new database.

I know your ready so here is the question:
How can I create the new site on the alumni's web server while keeping their existing site up and running. Then when ready "switching" on the CMS MS site.  I realize this may not really be a CMS MS question but rather a hosting/publishing question but I don't know how index.php gets called rather than index.html   I want to be able to just turn the new site on when we get it built and have it just the way we want it...again.

I'm enjoying working with this and how easy it is to delegate roles..Calendar, News, Photos

Thank you to all the contributors, I hope to be one soon.
Mike

[jmcgin51]

I would put CMSMS in a subdirectory on the existing production server (unless you have a test server you can use, which would be better).  Then, when you're ready to make the CMSMS site the live site, move it into the root and update your config file as needed.

[Dr.CSS]

If you have an existing index.html driven site you can, I have, just install cmsms in the root with it and since cmsms uses index.php your other site should be served up to your visitors till you rename index.html or delete it...

One of the nice things about the latest ver. of cmsms is the view site link now goes to index.php so if you do have it in with a index.html you see yoursite.com/index.php instead of yoursite.com/index.html...

[L84DNR]

Mark,
So if i use your method of installing in the same directory as my existing index.html...

When I'm done developing my new CMS site and rename index.html to index.old what happens?  The server just finds index.php on its own and uses that?

So if something goes wrong I can just rename my index.old back to index.html and I'm back on the old site?

Sounds like a good way to go in the event we don't get the CMS site right on the first shot.

Thanks,
Mike

[Dr.CSS]

Yes if you have index.html that will/should show first...

Have fun...

[RonnyK]

Basically,  it depends on your host, what sequence is used for the the index-files...

Ronny

[Dr.CSS]

@ RonnyK, that's why I said will/should, as most are set up to use .html first but not always...