Best Practise for redesigning an existing Matrix site

Squiz Matrix General Discussion
1

I need to implement a new design for an existing site. As well as the new design, the site structure needs to change.


I'm interested in what is regarded as best practise for this sort of thing?



My proposed upgrade plan is:

  • Create new site
  • Create new designs and apply
  • setup new site structure



    Once ready to go live:
  • remove URLs from old site
  • add URLs to new site
  • change content from Under Construction to Live



    Thoughts, comments?



    PS - yes, i spelt my name wrong when i signed up, if an Admin can assist that would be great (Avi?) ; )



    Cheers,

    Gart(h)
2

If the site already exists in Matrix, then setting up the new site structure could be tricky considering that children come along with parents. Any changes you make to the structure will happen on the live site as well.


Your best option is to copy the live system and set up a whole new Matrix system on the same box. Then, you can go nuts restructuring, designing and running long HIPOs. When you want to switch, just change the Apache aliases and it happens instantly. Also, you can always flip back if you stuff up overlook anything. :slight_smile:

3

I probably do the redesign and the restructure separately.


If you're working with a live site, you can apply your new design to the existing site as a user defined code, then you can view the design using SQ_DESIGN_NAME=code.



In terms of the restructure, it depends on the size of the site, and the complexity of the restructure. If you can get away with restructuring individual pages at a time, i'd do that. Otherwise, I suppose you could link your new structure into a new site, then change the URLs as suggested.



Either way, you will want to use the remap manager to manage redirects from your old to new urls.

4

Thanks guys.


Site content and structure are changing in a major way, so I'm treating it as a new site.



The current site is live and this new site is under construction until it gets its new content.



I'll setup up some remaps for URL changes that will make sense.



Cheers,

Garth



PS - Thanks for adding the "h"