I created an update of my site in a sub directory on my main website, like http://mysite.com/newsite for staging purposes. Normally when I want to make the update live, I'd just upload the site back to the root directory to replace all the existing files. However the site I'm working on now gets a ton of traffic, so I don't want any downtime at all or delays in going live with the update. Also I want to do this remotely, so I won't have access to a computer with all the files for me to upload.

Any suggestions on how I can make this process easier so I don't have to upload the site again, I can just make the site live by changing a setting or something in my site admin?

.htaccess Rewrite:

Temporarily Rewrite requests for mysite to the newsite.
Upload/Overwrite the original site at your leisure.
Remove the Rewrite.

If you really want absolutely zero downtime, set up the new version of the site at a different IP address. Get everything working there, and then do a DNS update to point people toward the new site/IP-address.

Good Luck

Originally Posted by danielcer

If you really want absolutely zero downtime, set up the new version of the site at a different IP address. Get everything working there, and then do a DNS update to point people toward the new site/IP-address.

Good Luck

how about the sessions in that case? will they survive the ip change?

sessions / cookies are server based (hostname) so shouldn't be affected