Hi there, hope someone can help. I am taking over control of a website. Thus I am setting up a hosting account on a new server and have all the site files & DB files to upload. I want to get the site live in a test envronment and check all is working before transfering the nameservers from the old domain hosting, to point to the new one. Any ideas how I can see the site in a test environment if I can't type in www.domain.com for example?
First of all I'm assuming you are on a shared host and therefore can't just browse to the IP address. Why not set up a subdomain, e.g. test.example.com, and point that at the new server. That way you can keep the old one in place but also see the new one, and move the rest of the DNS records over when you're happy with it. You will also have to set up the hostname on your control panel so that the webserver's virtual host records send that subdomain to your stuff.
Yeah its kindof strang, currently have no domain name but I can access through IP. I have actually uploaded all files (site uses expression engine) and I can see te site though a temporary url e.g. 193.43.233.~domain, however nothing works corectly - I can see all the text but there is no CSS formatting, as the script thinks doc root is 193.43.233 and not 193.43.233.~domain. Cant find anywhere to specify.