Hello,

I finally finished my website, and I am ready to upload it.

Can someone please explain how I can direct anyone trying to visit the website while I am testing the new site to an "Under Construction" page?

Thanks in advance!

Sarah

I'm sorry - I forgot the second part of my question.

Are there any tips you can give me re: uploading my project? I am replacing an old website, but I don't want to wipe out the old files (just in case!) However, I can't seem to copy them from the ftp folder. Should I rename them, like old_index.html, etc?

Here is what I would do in your situation:

first, copy all of your website files to your computer. Using any ftp editor find the website on your server and highlight all of the files and folders. Usually right clicking or selecting from a menu "download" will place all of that on your computer. I suggest making a specific folder first to store all of your files.

Next, I would create an under construction page using an html editor and saving it as "index.html". That way when someone goes to the site the only thing they see is the under construction.

Finally, the best thing to do when testing a site, is to setup a separate folder on your server called "beta". You can chose to password protect it if you want. Upload your entire site to that folder and let your client look at the progress on that folder.

Hiya Sarah,

Are you not able to create a folder on your computer in order to store all the files and pages from the current site in? Just download it all to that folder for safe keeping so in case anything goes wrong you can always put it back. If you can't download then you have a problem.

As for the page for construction that's really easy.

1. Rename the index file of the site pages you're currently building (not the ones already online) to something other than index.html, I would suggest index_real.html or something that tells you which file is the real index page for later.

2. Create your construction page and save it to your site project as index.hmtl.

3. Make sure to download or rename the current uploaded index.html page that is being used online so you don't overwrite it and lose it. Name it something like index_old.html or something that will tell you that it is the original website home page that is right now in use.

4. Now upload the index.html page you created that has all your construction messages on it and you're done. You should now be able to view the under construction page you created when ever you go to your site's main home page.

Hope this helps and don't forget to make sure you do the backups before any uploads first so you can always put it back, whether it's a just a page or so, or the whole site and you'll be set to go

Thank you both! That explains the "Under Construction page" issue.

For some reason though, I can't seem to copy any of the files that are within folders in our www folder on my company's server to my desktop, or to other places on the server. I can't figure out why. I guess I'll have to talk to our IT team.

I know on my server they are not located in my WWW folder. They are located in my public_html folder.

Then what is in your WWW folder? I thought that was the universal folder for anything you wanted to put online...

Technically it is supposed to. But, all uploading and downloading should be to your general public_html folder.

On my server, I don't have a public html folder or a www folder. I just have a root directory. So it depends on the hosting environment.

Correct, for example, on my server my public_html folder is my root directory.