Tearing down the old before the new: Why????

Just a quick question:

Why do so many people seem do this when redesigning a website:

Take the entire site down, and start uploading patchy designs and half finished layouts where there perfectly reasonable site used to be. I can understand people wanting to redesign, but why upload a new site before it is ready. I don't quite see what this achieves?

*shrug* Personally, I do everything offline until it's complete, and the upload, or fix and upload little things at a time. It's more convenient than uploading unfinished bits. *shrug*

I personnaly, Keep the original up, then upload under a different name and test it out, then back up old, and rename the new to replace the old.

people also want to have abit of the site of not to waste A perfectly good domain. etc and please themselevs and others, etc

There's alot of letters between Amateur & Professional.
I think the majority of people who do this are still reading through the earlier letters

well, for me and what we did to promote the upcoming site, I put up a 'teaser poster' of the new design. But, unlike what you said, I didn't take the old site down. I think that's definitely counter-productive to remove the entire site, and I would never do it.

As for working with clients, I never put up anything until it's completed. And then make the updates and adjustments from that completed state.

Joebert hit the nail on the head.

the only time anyone will get that happen is when i am deleting the old site and putting the new one up at the time - which is generally a really quick process so by the time they refresh the page its all good

I took my old site down and throw up random splash pages in hopes of actually finishing a new version without scrapping it halfway through.

Why didn't I keep my old site up? It worked and was had all the content I needed.

Simple... I hated it with a passion. I couldn't bare having that site up representing my work.

I think a lot of it depends on how embarrased you are about your previous site

If somebody's still learning, they did their last site a year ago, and has come on a long way, they may be so ashamed of their old site, that they don't want people going and poking around it when they tell them they're working on a new one

Personally though, I don't do it. I develop the new behind-the-scenes. Either on a password protected subdomain, or simply on a server here on the LAN.

Professionally, I never upload anything to production until it's production quality work. Privately, on my own site? I don't really care. Only a handful of people actually ever go there. I use it to test various things I'm working on on the side that I'd like to get feedback on from friends. I redesigned the template for my site, but while doing so, I decided I didn't like half the garbage I had posted (For example, I'd written a couple JS games for my mom since couldn't install games at work... heh, but while they were kind of cool, I was tired of them). I haven't take the time to remove the links in the navigation... Mostly, I have better things to do and I don't really much care.

But... again.. professional work is a different story altogether. unfinished work goes on the client extranet, not the their domain name.

.c

deepain and i upload redesigns to a seperate directory for testing. (deepain is using the subdomain http://4.deepain.com at the moment) I too think its pointless to upload half made sites during a redesign.

To be honest with you, this is what I did with the site I am constructing now. Why I did that is because I am wanting to completely redo my site conceptually, and the old site had nothing at all to do with what I am doing now.

Also it was kind of a burning ceremony for me, made me feel whole again. Oh and also what axe said. lol.

Maybe not the best way to do it, but I am still learning.

well i do that, and the reason is i like to see it on the web and worken a bit....

i do that... here and there. it depends on the site, and who it's representing.
but my personal sites, it's because im ALWAYS in renovation... i have
a really hard time totally completing a site, because i always wanna do
something new, or the style changes.

im really more of an artist than a coder, but i've been doing it since
97, enrolled in school 2 years ago, and really... im just into the virtual
canvas. so i learnt the code, to make the magic happen.


i know my crap, and i still use shortcuts... and hardly call stuff by what it's
ment to be.
but for me, it's a matter of indecison, and hating what im replacing...


ya know, after you stare at a page forEVER... it gets old. expecially for
the creator.


i think tho, that the majority of people are probly just learning... it's a bad
habit, so if you can break it, do so... 7 years, and i still do it. and i still
have more stuff to learn.