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By VictorE on
I currently have a website with approximately 150 pages. I would like to install drupal without having any downtime (or very limited downtime) of the website and the content. Is there a way to load all of the content into drupal and then do a switch to drupal once the content is completely loaded and I am ready to use drupal to drive the site? Also, is it possible to maintain my existing directory paths with Drupal?
If these questions are possible, can you give me the details on how to do it?
Many thanks!
Comments
More questions than answers
If your hosting service allows sub-domains you can install Drupal under a sub-domain and with a minimal amount of effort switch over later. The next two parts content and paths require a little more detail to answer. Importing the content into drupal depends on how the current content is stored. And in general you should be able to maintain the paths using with the path module and/or the path auto module. Details though would depend on the current paths.
Many thanks for the reply.
Many thanks for the reply. I'm not sure if I will be able to go the sub-domain route. Would it be possible to rename the index.php file to a different file name (thus preserving my current home page), load up the content, and then rename it back to index.php when I'm ready to cutover to Drupal?
You cannot rename the
You cannot rename the index.php file for this would break all of the links everywhere in Drupal. To the best of my knowledge no setting allows you to change that. The better route would be to place Drupal in a folder. Then you could setup your site at example.com/drupal/index.php.
If I put Drupal in a
If I put Drupal in a subfolder, does that limit any of my functionality of drupal? In other words, must all of my drupal links start in the drupal folder if the program is there [ie www.site.com/drupal/node/1? Must it always run out of that subfolder, or once I set it up, can I copy it back to the main folder?
I put it in a subfolder
I built my new page in Drupal in a subfolder first and when it was finished I moved it up to the root. Downtime was very short. You must have the possibility of having a separate database for it though.
This works, but as of Drupal
This works, but as of Drupal 4.7 you might havea problem when moving the site to the top directory later.
The problem is that any links you add manually in the body of a node will need to look like /drupal/node/123 in the subdirectory and like /node/123 in the top directory.
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Drupal services
My Drupal services
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Drupal services
My Drupal services
Do your mean short url's?
Do your mean short url's? Why is there a change of that in 4.7 ?
When I moved it the short urls changed automatically since they are related to the folder where Drupal is. I hade to do a change in htaccess and maybe somewhere else (one thread about it here) don't quite remember but the urls worked as a charm.
Are you sure of this? If
Are you sure of this? If you were to place a link in a Drupal node to node/42 then it would use the rewrite base you have set to either send the link to example.com/node/42 or example.com/sub/node/42. I setup an enitre site in a folder on a different server and then moved it over and it worked perfectly.
I have a domain free that I
I have a domain free that I can set Drupal up on to configure it and import content. If I did this, would it be possible to copy the files over to the target domain and export/import the database? I am guessing that would be a way to get up and running almost immediately.
Done just that...
I have done just that. That method means all that you have to change is the reference to the database in and the base URL. Thats assuming that the servers are nearly identical.