testing web site

hodgepro

New Member
I need to upgrade my CRELoaded shopping cart software and make some other changes to my web site. I do not want to do the work on my live site. I was thinking of copying everything to a new server account, doing the work and testing it there and finally changing the nameservers. To test the site I am thinking of using hosts files. Is there a better way to do this? Will hosts files work for testing before the DNS is updated? I appreciate any input.

Thanks,
Alan
 
Hi hodgepro,

I have no idea how MySQL calls and everything will work if you go the hosts file route but couldn't you just create a subdomain or even just copy everything into a separate directory? Make a copy of the existing DB too of course :)

I haven't done shopping carts but I've done other sites this way and it worked fine.
 
Thanks for your response. It is helpful to know how others do it. I asked the same question of tech support and Randy said that testing with hosts files should work. Obviously buying a separate VPS is more costly though.

Thanks,
Alan
 
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