Hi Tina,<div><br></div><div>There are many ways to handle this, my answer is one, that I have found the simplest, easiest to implement.</div><div><br></div><div>My preferred way requires that you create a subdomain. It could be called anything, but let&#39;s call it &quot;drupal&quot; so the domain would be: <a href="http://drupal.example.com">drupal.example.com</a>. In cpanel, and probably others, when you create the subdomain, a subdirectory will automatically get created at <a href="http://example.com/drupal">example.com/drupal</a>. The Drupal files go in the drupal subdirectory. But you navigate there via <a href="http://drupal.example.com">http://drupal.example.com</a> and NOT <a href="http://example.com/drupal">example.com/drupal</a>.</div>
<div><br></div><div>When you are ready to take the site live, back up the old site&#39;s files and then remove them, and then simply move all the files and directories in <a href="http://example.com/drupal">example.com/drupal</a> to <a href="http://example.com/">example.com/</a> (make sure the .htaccess file gets moved with everything else).</div>
<div><br></div><div>With this approach, there is no need to fuss with the settings.php file or with the .htaccess file or any other trickery.</div><div><br></div><div>Look at the following two examples for how you write paths for links internal to the site. Let&#39;s say you have an &quot;about&quot; page, and you&#39;ve created a custom URL for it &quot;about&quot;. During the development process it&#39;s url is:</div>
<div><br></div><div><a href="http://drupal.example.com/about">http://drupal.example.com/about</a></div><div><br></div><div>For Drupal config screens that ask for a &quot;path&quot; like the menu set-up screens, the path you will give is: </div>
<div><br></div><div>about  </div><div><br></div><div>(NOT &quot;/about&quot;  and NOT  &quot;<a href="http://drupal.example.com/about">http://drupal.example.com/about</a>&quot;)</div><div><br></div><div>If you are creating a link to the about page &quot;inline,&quot; meaning that you are writing text in the &quot;body&quot; field or some other field and creating the link &quot;by hand&quot; -- then you want use a &quot;root relative&quot; link as follows: &lt;a href=&quot;/about&quot;&gt;Visit the about page&lt;/a&gt;. Note that you WANT the leading &quot;/&quot; in this case.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Hope this is clear!</div><div><br></div><div>best,</div><div><br></div><div>Shai<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Jan 20, 2010 at 4:50 PM, Tina Williams <span dir="ltr">&lt;<a href="mailto:tina@words-etcetera.com">tina@words-etcetera.com</a>&gt;</span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">I am new to Drupal, and I&#39;m setting it up for a 1000 member<br>
organization&#39;s website. Drupal will run their website as well as<br>
using CiviCMS (thanks for the recommendation!) for our membership needs.<br>
<br>
Because they have a current website, and I can&#39;t take it off-line<br>
while I develop the Drupal one, I&#39;ve set Drupal up in a folder. Now<br>
I&#39;m beginning to worry about how hard it will be to move all this to<br>
the root directory??? Am I worried about nothing?<br>
<br>
How difficult is it to move from the folder to the root and how many<br>
things can go wrong?<br>
<br>
Am I asking a really stupid question?<br>
<br>
Thanks,<br>
<br>
Tina<br>
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