The non-profit I work for has a main site/URL (www.myurl.org) that I am trying to convert over to Drupal. The site has several thousand pages running on a mix of MovableType, Wordpress, and static pages with new ones being added/updated every day. What I have done is build the new Drupal site that looks exactly the same with most of the same features and the same urls for the sections (/news/, /research/, /about/) on a different URL (www.mynewurl.org) that we also own, but running on the same dedicated server.
My issue is how to make the switch to Drupal while not disturbing the main site. Does anyone have any experience in doing this, or have any advice on the easiest way to make the transition? All the old content is already been imported into the new Drupal site on the new URL as well.
I don't want to create a new sub-folder on the old site (say www.myurl.org/cms/) as I, and my very touchy boss, don't like. Wondering if I should try to switch it over playing with the apache settings (everything is on a dedicated which I have access to), install Drupal on the old root and try importing the db from the test-built site, or something else. Really hoping one of you Drupal gurus have done something similar and can give this newb some advice.
Thanks in advance!!!
-Dave
Comments
Here's what I do
I generally use a hosted web server, but I can describe what I do when updating an old site to a new version. I follow this procedure when migrating from some other CMS onto Drupal, and I also use it when migrating from one version of Drupal to a newer version.
The web hosting services that I use typically have a directory somewhere on the server that they designate as the "root directory" for my website, with a local path such as /var/www/html or /usr/www/users/myaccount. For the sake of this discussion, let's assume that the path to my root directory is just /mypath.
The first thing I do when migrating a site is create a subdirectory of /mypath and copy all of the files and directories from my old website into that subdirectory, e.g., /mypath/oldsite. I then change the server configuration so that www.myurl.org redirects to /mypath/currentsite instead of just /mypath. (Most of the web hosting services that I use have a web-interface control panel that lets me make this change. On one occasion, I had to contact the support staff at a web hosting service directly and have them make the change for me.)
To develop the new website, I first create a separate subdirectory for it within /mypath, e.g., /mypath/newsite. I also configure the server so that I have a separate subdomain which points to /mypath/newsite. If my old website is at the www.myurl.org, I might create a subdomain such as devsite.myurl.org for the new site while I'm working on it.
Throughout the development phase, therefore, the following paths map to the following URLs:
Once the development is finished, all I have to do to go live with the new website is rename the subdirectories. I rename the "currentsite" directory to "oldsite," and I then rename "newsite" to "currentsite." I don't have to mess with apache settings. Simply renaming the directories means that /mypath/currentsite now maps to www.myurl.org.
Another advantage to this approach is that after I've updated to the new version of the website, I have an easy retreat path in the event that some horrible bug is noticed after the launch of the new site. To put things back the way they were, all I have to do is rename the directories back to their old names.
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Customer Support Engineer, Granicus
https://granicus.com