Reseller hosting: Replace old site with new one

[wire]

Hi,

I'm still getting the hang of working in cpanel, and I'm trying to figure out the best practice for replacing a web site with a new one.

I have a couple of older web sites that I've been redeveloping by working within a new folder in the main site's web root with a subdomain pointed at the new folder (like new.website.com).

The trick is, what's the best way in cpanel to launch the new site? In retrospect, it would've been better I guess to set up an actual account in WHM for the new.website.com, but I'm used to working with Windows servers where I would just go into IIS and change the site properties to use the new site's sub-folder as the root for the domain and the new site would be live instantly.

Cpanel doesn't seem to have an option for changing the default directory of a site, so I'm a little stuck.

What do more seasoned cpanel veterans do for a seamless transition? If you do set-up a new account in WHM for the new site, how do eventually point the main domain over to the new site without any downtime (I use my own DNS, which may simplify or complicate that) or confusion?

Thanks.

[Pazeh]

it all depends on how the newe site is coded. Do you have your domain name in the links? Or you are using relative links? Do you want to keep the old site?

Before doing anything, backup your files (via ftp or cpanel or any other method you choose).

The best practice, in my opinion, will be to create a folder under the public_html called old move all the files of the current site to that folder (remember not to move the sub domain's folders, like new), then move everything from the new to the public_html

This should replace all the old site with the new.

If you have changed the file names of the pages, it is a good idea to put redirects in the htaccess file, or do so via cpanel's redirect. so that people that do have bookmarked your old pages, do find the new alternative pages easily & it is far more important for search engines & people visiting from search engines, till the new content is crawled n indexed.