Moving to a new system AND server

Need help with problem

[tama]

I've got myself in a bit of a bind. After about 7 years, my site needed a complete system overhaul. I'm on a budget and I outsourced a programmer through a freelance site. The programmer has went way beyond deadline but is just about done now.

At the same time, my longtime host is overpriced. I am moving to a new server which offers many more features and options which will make site management much easier - all for less than half the price of my current host.

THE PROBLEM: The programmer working on the rebuild has uploaded the new system to my new host's temporary URL. I wanted to test everything here FIRST, and when everything was correct, point my domain to the new host. But the programmer is telling me many of the systems features will not work until we are off the temporary site and have the domain pointed to the new server.

Normally, this would be a simple fix. Point the domain to the new server, put up a "Temporarily Down" page, and go live when the bugs were worked out. But I have another problem. I receive a nightly batch drop of several thousand entries. My agreement with the company who sends this drop requires that I keep their entries on my site every day. I can't trust my current programmer to set up the batch processing so I am hiring another one.

How can I move my new system to my new server, test it out, all without missing a day with the processed batch entries?

[andye]

How about running the new system on a different port number to the current one, on the same server?

hth, a.