A good way to get your Backlight site ready to go is to design and develop it in a test folder or a test sub-domain. You can get everything working just right without upsetting your existing site and then when you’re ready, simply move it into place.
Here are a few things to help you with that.
In your existing site, when you’re ready to make the move, you’ll need to remove existing index.php and index.html files. Remove the existing .htaccess files. If you had any special coding in the .htaccess file then just download it to your computer for safe keeping and accessibility.
You should also remove other stand alone files, like images you might be using for a favicon or other purposes. Folders that you use to house site images can stay in the root of your site, but you’re actually better off moving them after you’ve uploaded the new site. (Create a folder to store your extra images in /backlight/custom/ to house your extra images and reference them from there.)
If you have a blog installed in its own folder, leave that where it is.
Assuming you’ve moved or deleted what you don’t need from the root of your site, you’re ready to go.
There are two ways of making the move. Using your FTP program, you can move all the files from your development folder to the root, or you can download all the files to your computer and then upload them to the root of your site.
I recommend the latter approach. The reason for this is to leave your test site intact in case you want to add some customization. Test any customization first in your test site before risking a big blank white screen of death for your main site.
After the files are moved/copied, log into Backlight in your main site and change the Site and Company URL to the new location. If using WordPress, change the WordPress URL as well.
If you were using Lightroom to upload albums in your test site, then be sure to change the API URL in Lightroom Publisher Settings for that instance of Publisher.
That’s basically all you need to do. If you got a bit elaborate with your site and added images to text, you may need to edit the copy of those pages to update the URLs to those images.
I am about ready to switch to the production site and I am a little bit scared because I have never done this before….🙂
I did read your guide above and will use your suggested second approach (uploading). I am currently backing up the complete newly developed subdomain site (FZ-Test) and my current production site (public_html to my DT.
Is there a reason why I should not delete all folders/folders in public_html before the upload?
I guess that depends on what’s there and what your updating from. If you’re updating from Backlight 1, then you should follow the instructions in the TTG docs (unless you’re starting from scratch). If it is an update from an earlier version of TTG CE4 or Backlight and you want to save things like albums and cart settings, you definitely don’t want to delete the files that contain all that info.
To clarify – It’s a completely new development. I freshly installed BL3.X on the subdomain (FZ-Test.franzzihlmannphoto.com). The all new site was developed on this subdomain and all images were uploaded there.
I guess it still depends on what was in the public_html folder to begin with. Anything to do with the contents of any old site can probably be deleted. I don’t know about any other files though, such as those your host originally place.