how to upload 1000 + content page

Need to take site down to push new content pages

[SEOold]

What is the safest way to take down the site while pushing the new pages (1000 +). This will likely take around 10 minutes or so. The reason it can not be done gradually is becasue their can be many issues when pushing gradually. If we take the site down we can test everything and push the new pages with out any problems. Is there naythgin that I can do for bots that visit the site within those 10 minutes. This can't be done at night also. All reccomendations are welcomed.

The reason that we are doign this is becasue we were licensed to content that is on our site. We no longer have this license and need to take down the old pages and add conent from the new licensing. This content is not duplicate. Is ther anything wrong with redirectign the old files to the homepage so we don't loose traffic. I know its much better to do a one-on-one 301 but our new pages are not the same.

This ended up beign a two part question.

[tedster]

Ten minutes of down time should not be a problem for the domain. If the actual content for the pages has changed, then I usually prefer a 404 or 410 status rather than a 301 to the home page. A 301 implies that the content is still available, only at a new URL.

[SEOold]

Thanks Tedster. Although we no longer have the content, we are still offering the same type of content. The theme of the site will not be changing.

Not sure if the 404 would be best though, if I give the user a 404 then they will select another site. If I 301 them to my homepage they can navigate to what they are looking for. If they don't find it they will leave, but if I give them the 404 from start I already lost the customer. Is there a negative impact with doing over 1000+ 301's to the homepage? It maybe better then just to do the 404. Any thoughts?

[mack]

One option may be to upload the site with the incorrect folder names... For example if you have a folder called /info name the new version /info1 then when you have everything in place simple rename the existing /folder to /blabla and rename /info1 to /info that way everything is in place and it will only take a moment or two to rename the folders.

Less downtime, will just take a bit of planning.

Mack.

[SEOold]

Unfortunately the site pages are not within a folder. All the pages are on the root.

[g1smd]

They are still in a folder as seen from the FTP view of your server!

[vincevincevince]

g1smd's idea is good and is something I've used in the past. Your server probably uses 'httpdocs', 'public_html' or 'www' as a folder to contain your web-pages. Find that folder, create a new one, i.e. 'httpdocs2', 'public_html2', or 'www2'. Then upload all the new content to that new folder.

When it's time to switch, rename 'httpdocs->httpdocs_old' and 'httpdocs2->httpdocs', or whatever your folder name is. You could also just delete 'httpdocs' and rename 'httpdocs2->httpdocs'.

[leadegroot]

Yes, I've done that more than once - upload to another folder on the same level as public_html and then swap the names.
(and the occassional time that the whole thing has been completely dead, I just swap them back while I think about what went wrong :))

If your hosting doesn't give you access to the higher level then it probably isn't very good hosting :(

[vincevincevince]

If your hosting doesn't give you access to the higher level then it probably isn't very good hosting

Access to a higher level can be handy for security purposes as you can then have folders above the document root to store .htpasswd etc, but it's nothing a good .htaccess can't duplicate above the document root... so I'd not say that the hosting is bad just because you have no access above the document root.

For something as infrequent at this I'm sure that any good webhost would be happy to do the directory swap for you, even if you were to upload the new site into a duplicate directory within the current document root.