[skyhigh007]

Hi

I have few questions about testing the site before go live.

1) is it a good practice or idea to test your site in the root folder with an index.html in it ?
The actual website is written in php , so index.php in it the root folder as well.

2) If I install the SSL already and I want to edit some of the files later on, do I have to reinstall SSL again ?

3) If I test my site in a sub folder with SSL installed, once i move it to the root folder, do I have to reinstall SSL ?


Thanks

[awatson]

Well, the best option is to use a staging server and test on that, then move things to the live server after testing. Or you could use a subdirectory, possibly password-protected, for testing. If it's in a subfolder, you shouldn't have to change anything with the SSL - that's installed on the live server for the domain you run under, so it shouldn't be affected by your php.

[tomdkat]

I'm with awatson on this.

Peace...

[skyhigh007]

After I test the site in the subfolder and everything works, I have to move all the files in the root folder, then some of the settings might have to change it again. Do you think the back end setting will still be the same ?

[Mudley]

i usually test on a subdomain like beta.domain.com
that way any graphic, css, or link paths can be relative to site root and any relative to file includes will still work

[colinsp]

The other thing is to look at something like WAMP to develop and test locally before you go the sub domain route like Mudley suggests.

[tomdkat]

Originally Posted by skyhigh007

After I test the site in the subfolder and everything works, I have to move all the files in the root folder, then some of the settings might have to change it again. Do you think the back end setting will still be the same ?

Without knowing the kinds of settings you're talking about, it's hard to know what will need to be changed.

If you use relative paths for locations of things, you shouldn't have to change much (if anything) when you move the files from the subdirectory to the root directory on the server. I do this kind of site testing frequently but I'm also using static HTML pages (even though I do test PHP form processing scripts in this manner as well) and not dynamically generated pages.

Here's a way to know what you'll need to change: anything that refers to an absolute path, whether it be a URL (http://www.domain.com/images/photo.jpg) or an actual directory path (/home/mydomain/path/to/something/file.txt), will need to be changed as you move the site from one directory to another. If you don't have any or many absolute paths involved, you won't have much to change.

Peace...