Best way to migrate site from temp folder?

[securitycontainer]

Hi, what is the preferred method as far as migrating a web site from a temporary folder to becoming live? The temporary folder is currently a folder underneath the site's root (live) folder. File names are the same. I want to avoid the possibility of users clicking from a page from the 'old' site to a page on the 'new' site or otherwise becoming confused. What is recommended?
Thanks!

[incrediblehelp]

Well why not set up a sudomain as the dev website and just password protect that URL?

[Lorel509]

I redesign websites and keep them in a folder on my own site until the owner is pleased and all the pages are ready to load. I put "noindex/nofollow" meta tags on all pages and also set up a disallow in robots text for that folder and have never had a problem with people or search engines picking them up. I make sure nobody is linking to them either.

[flhu]

If you are worried about the visitors on your site as you are moving the files, you can put a notice on your old site that it will have a major update at, for example, August 30th, 12:00 am GMT. (Or use a javascript countdown, which can either be seen as an expectation builder or come off as completely cheesy.) And/Or you can take the whole site down for 10-30 minutes with just a page saying that the site is being updated.

I would also determine the hour when the fewest visitors are on the site and do the migration then.

[securitycontainer]

Originally Posted by incrediblehelp

Well why not set up a sudomain as the dev website and just password protect that URL?

Thanks for the tip. How do I do that? I mean how do I set up a subdomain? Pswd protect it? The thing is, I will be totally replacing all that is currently there with this new version that is in a subfolder, example: domain.com/devfolder/index.html. Does that make sense?
Thanks

[securitycontainer]

Originally Posted by Lorel509

I redesign websites and keep them in a folder on my own site until the owner is pleased and all the pages are ready to load. I put "noindex/nofollow" meta tags on all pages and also set up a disallow in robots text for that folder and have never had a problem with people or search engines picking them up. I make sure nobody is linking to them either.

Hmm. Speaking of noindex/nofollow, what do I do with pages from the previous version of the site that have been renamed or deleted altogther from the new version of the site? Is noindex/nofollow applicable?

[flhu]

I might be confused as to the original question, but everyone seems to be answering how to keep people and spiders from being on your new site while it is under development, and not answering the question, as I see it, of that 5 minute window when you have visitors on your old site, you update, they click a link and suddenly they find themselves on a completely different site.

However, if I am correct, try not to be confused. Their advice is good, but completely the wrong topic.

Oh, and make sure your 404 error page is up-to-date and has links to the rest of your new site.

[securitycontainer]

Originally Posted by flhu

I might be confused as to the original question, but everyone seems to be answering how to keep people and spiders from being on your new site while it is under development, and not answering the question, as I see it, of that 5 minute window when you have visitors on your old site, they click a link and suddenly they find themselves on a completely different site.

However, if I am correct, try not to be confused. Their advice is good, but completely the wrong topic.

Oh, and make sure your 404 error page is up-to-date and has links to the rest of your new site.

Yes, their advice is good, no complaints there.
Regarding the 404 page - are there posts here as far as how to do that? I'll look.
Thanks flhu!

[ron angel]

Originally Posted by securitycontainer

Yes, their advice is good, no complaints there.
Regarding the 404 page - are there posts here as far as how to do that? I'll look.
Thanks flhu!

I have found however you do this sort of thing something will get through and be indexed. I have found the best & simplest way is to
have the new site off line on the computer when it is all ready to go
(apart from the whatever you have overlooked that does not become apparent until on line "grin") then as stated before, find least busy time delete the old site completely from the server (keep a few backups ...) then put new site up simple...