Work on site w/out…

Not exactly sure what you are asking. I usually do not work on a ‘live’ site, but rather copy to my local PC and work there. Once done, I copy the changes back to the live site.

Here is an article with the steps I use to migrate (copy) a site: http://wordpress.mcdspot.com/2012/08/22/migrating-a-wordpress-site-step-by-step/