While it is possible to make configuration changes to a live site, it is good practice to make changes to a separate copy of the site, and then apply those configuration changes in a single step to the live site.

The overall process is:

1. Create an initial site.
2. Create a copy of the site, so you now have a "Live" site and a "Development" site.
3. The "Live" site is then made public and used, meaning its user database and the data in its tables may be changed.
4. The "Development" site is where configuration changes are made: new pages and other components are added or removed, and tables can have fields added, removed or changed. The data in these tables, and the users in the user database can be populated with dummy test data.

Once the development site has reached a stage where the changes are ready to go live, the "Live" site needs to Upgraded.

1. in the Site Manager, the Development site needs to be either saved as a Template on the server, or Exported as a ncx file.
2. Then, select the Live site, and choose Upgrade. From the Upgrade dialog, choose the development site (either by selecting the Template, or the ncx file).

The Upgrade process will then:

• Stop the Live site.
• Make a safety copy of the Live site.
• Create a new site, based on a combination of the configuration of the Development site, and the data and users of the Live site.
• Start the new Live site.

Depending on the complexity of the site and the amount of data this process may take some time. While the upgrade is in progress the site will be offline.

 

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Notes:

The Upgrade process preserves the Page surface contents from of the Development site, and does not retain any changes made to page surfaces on the Live site. To preserve data from teh Live site the data must be stored in Tables, (and then use a queries to embed the table data on surfaces).

The same Development site can be used to Upgrade multiple different Live sites.

If the live site was in a Stopped state before upgrading, the new site will also be left in a Stopped state.

While the upgrade is in progress and  the site is offline, it may be desirable to redirect the users to a placeholder site. If the placeholder is on the same server this can be done simply by binding the placeholder site to the domain name(s) instead of the live site. If teh placeholder is on another server then the DNS will also need to be changed to point to the other server.