RE: [cobalt-users] RaQ2

["Douglas MacDougall" <mac@xxxxxxxxx>]

>I have someone who wants me to make them a
>new website.  They already have one up on a
> different server and want to keep it there until
> the one I make is up and tested.

A few choices here. First, if you want the new pages to be accessed by
everyone (i.e. not just for testing purposes) then you need to change the
internic records. You will need to change the nameserver that is currently
listed (the customer's previous IPP) to your own nameserver. You may also
want to change the technical contact and possibly even the adminsitrative
contact info, but that's between you and your customer. NOTE:: you cannot
change this info yourself. It must be sent from the registrant's email
address (registrant of the domain.. ) you can find all the info, (though
highly obfuscated) at networksolutions.com (Look under modify domain)

To TEST the new pages there is an easy way to check. Just create a new
virtual domain with a unique IP (not an IP you are using for other domains.)
You can then access the domain with http://111.111.111.111/ (be sure to
change the 1's to the real IP :-)

Once the site has been confirmed to be working properly, go ahead and make
the changes to internic. If you want to use name based hosting (using same
IP), you can go into the RaQ2 configuration and modify the IP number after
you finished testing it.

Note: you can't use the http:// ipnum / method unless you use a unique IP.

If you don't have IP's to use, you'll have to put the website in a temp
folder on your own domain and hope all the links work properly when you
transfer over. Either way, if there are hard links to the domain name (ie.
such as an <IMG SRC="http://www.badwebdesigner.com/imgs/myimage.jpg";> these
files will be pulled from the CURRENT domain, so if for example, that image
was missing in your file directory, you would never know it, even though you
tested the page.

Best thing to do is to grep for the domain name in all the pages from telnet
and change them to relative urls instead of full urls such as <IMG
SRC="/imgs/myimage.jpg">. (This goes the same for links and all other
references <A HREF="/mydir/page2.html" etc. etc.)

Douglas MacDougall - CTO
Green Net Asia Co. Ltd.
Japan.