Working on site while it is simultaneously live?

[miner2049er]

A few questions:

(1) For privacy, while testing my web pages, how can I access a page so that it loads fine on my PC - but to anybody else who tries to view it they get some sort of error or message? i.e. what does my PHP code need to do in order to allow it to just work when I view it in my browser? (I know I can develop a site locally on my PC, but that is NOT what I want to do here - I wish to load the pages off my host's server - just as regular visitors would do.)


(2) I would like to continue development on my site, while a version of that site is also live. I want my site to be running 24/7, and don't want to shut it down to add updates or do maintenance. How do sites like Amazon.com, CNN.com etc. handle this sort of thing - does anybody have any advice on working with such a system - how is the switch over to updated code and database made? Can anybody point me to any articles, resources etc?

(3) Anything else I should consider when developing a site that is simultaneously live - any other tips?

Thanks in advance, Simon.

[faze1]

Hello,

Have you considered putting a temporary index.html while you build your index.php and various pages related to your site. The index.php will be subordinate to index.html. Create your site and when you are ready to unvail it, simply delete index.html from the directory. To view your site during development use the url yoursite.com/index.php.

Just a thought, a rather simple solution, I'm sure you could find many other ways to reach the same end.

Hope this helps,

Craig

[MarketFoundHost]

Put up temporary pages like faze1 said. That will help you to test the pages and also keep your site up amd going. After completion of the testing just replace the files.

[Aurillian]

you may consider running a private server on the computer you are developing on. for example, you can get PHP MySQL and Apache for free, so just install them on your computer and develop to your hearts desire while the site located on the actual server is not affected. once you upload the new pages, and update the database (depending on what you are changing, this could take a couple minutes, so if you, try to be farsighted with the table layout so you dont need to change it much in the future), then the new site will be available, as long as people aren't veiwing a cache.

so in essence im saying that you shouldnt directly mess with your site that people are veiwing until the new pages are complete, or you have something that needs to be tested live.

my 2 cents