Redirection when updating pages? How?

How do you update your site?

[silverbytes]

I set a temporal redirection to site root:
/ because I needed to update the website. I thought that would redirect any user trying to reach any page of my site to the url I set for the temporal redirection.
But that didn't happen.

How do you update your website without bothering visitors?

[karmov]

How do you update your website without bothering visitors?

Very carefully, in a staging area. I usually will have a completed version of my site up in a semi-private area where I can iron out all of the details. Then when I've got it just the way I want it, I move it all over to the live site.

[silverbytes]

And to you set any redirection meanwhile? How?

[harbs]

I have Apache & mySQL running on my PC and do all development & updating from localhost.

Once finished & satisfied, I just upload the mySQL database & any other files I may have changed to my "live" site. No redirecting, no mess.

PS - I do keep my fingers crossed and my heart does beat faster when phpmyadmin is updating the database. Other than that, no sweat.

[JKMitchell]

I run a development server (that at a pinch can run as a backup to the main live server).

Also, I use relative file names so it works no matter what domain I test under (usually test.domain.com)

Likewise I take a copy of any MySql tables that have been updated on the live server and that gives me a bit of security if (and it's only happened once) the amended database will not publish or is corrupted.

[silverbytes]

I use mainly html and php files, I use local copy and put it via ftp but when that is happening users may experience errors or missing images and so on.

Isn't there any better way?

[karmov]

For most cases, that should be fine if you do a bit of planning. For example, upload all of your images first. They usually take longer to upload and and they won't cause any problems if they're uploaded before everything else. Otherwise, the only way your visitors would see errors while you're upploading your files is if you have a massive amount of files and changes. In this case, break down your updates into something simpler.

With regards to our site, we have a development server/DB for "big changes", our site uses a CMS that writes out files to the filesystem rather than serve them dynamically. So when it comes time for an update, we test it, turn off the script that writes out, update the DB, write out to a test area (if we're feelling paranoid), and then turn on the write script again. Takes about 1 to 1 1/2 minutes to write out the whole site. It is possible that users will suffer minor problems during that window, but it's a cost we're willing to live with as we very rarely overhaul the entire site at once.

With regards to redirects, we don't change our filenames so in the case of an update, we don't need to. In the case of a re-organization that forces some path/filename changes, we then use apache redirects, but we try to minimize that as much as reasonable.