Hey guys...I need some advice. I'm going to be doing a Joomla install for my works website. I need to keep the current site up and running while I install/configure & design the new site. I am going to be installing Joomla in another directory under the public_html, such as like /new or something. Will I be able to (when its complete) move the site up one directory? Any ideas on how to do this? I didnt know if there would be any issues connecting to the databases or not and I need to keep the downtime & cut-over minimal. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

I think this is a little bit complicated, but this is what you could do.

Copy your old site to a dir 'old'
Now you have your old site twice (in your public and in your public/old)
Create a index.php in your public:

PHP Code:

<?php
header('location: old/index.php')
?>

Remove your old site in the public dir (not the index.php)
Install Joomla
Remove the index.php and the site in the 'old' dir

Why not install WAMP (Apache, MySQL, PHP for Windows) or similar and work locally while creating your new site? Once it's working, just upload it all at once to your server, replacing your old site (but keep a copy of the old one just in case).

WAMP is a perfect option. Installing Joomla! is painless on your local machine, and allows you to make any change you need before taking the site online.

Hi,
I think this should help:
http://docs.joomla.org/Copying_a_Joomla_website
On the other hand, I'll try to write a simpler version sometime next week.
In the mean time you can also try JoomlaCloner . It is commercially available with free demo at:
http://www.joomlaplug.com/

Just copy over an make sure your configuration.php file is modified to match the new location, thats it