Importing and Set-up.

Hi There –

I have a client that I am updating the theme on her site. We want to keep her current site up while I work on the new theme, setting up and building pages. Normally what I do is create a subfolder for the new theme, work on it, and switch over all the url’s under general settings….easy peasy…But this site…not so much.

So a few things.

• My client currently has around 7,000 images on her current site. I’m finding the exporting from her current site to the new site is taking FOREVER. I’ve had to import five times, the same xml file from the current site to the new theme in the sub-folder, and it’s still not fully importing everything, which is why I keep having to import numerous times. Is there an easier way to import everything?

• Also the image links are all still linking to the current site and not the new site I just imported them into.

• Would it be easier to just build a few sample posts on this new theme in the subfolder, make my CSS tweaks, set up pages and such..and then just save out the theme I worked on and upload it into the current site and activate it? And maybe throw a we are under construction page up for a day while I make sure everything from the new theme is working as I designed it too?

I’m fine to keep importing images into the new wordpress subfolder as long as there is an easy way to change the image links over from the current site to the new site when I switch everything over.

Any advice or knowledge would appreciated.
Cheers!
Tara