Second site for testing?

[Crazypilot]

Hi all,

I have a live Osc shop, www.tokyotoys.biz , with paying customers.

My problem is that I start to find it hard to try and experiment with new features.

 

Shure I can use "Down for maintenance" and block visitors when trying out a new layout/modification,

but some contributions (as I believe we all have had a few) are lenghty to install and when installed it turned out not to be "the one". Meanwhile I have been blocking presumable customers and income.

 

How do you people do?

Do you have a second testsite where you can try out all kind of mods without affecting the "real" one?

 

I am thinking of putting a copy of the real site in a "testfolder", do my changes there, try it and verify the changes before inserting the changes to the real one.

 

Can the testfolder be on the same server as te real one?

 

Any suggestions on how to proceed?

 

Best regards

Crazypilot TokyoToys

[AlanR]

Sure, most of the bigger hosting firms are offering multiple databases and multiple domain support. Sometimes I install a new copy just to try one thing on a clean install.