[NashChristian]

Lynne,

Thanks for the response!

I've only been using vB for about 6 months, so I'm sort of new to all of this.

Few quick questions:

A.) How do I initiate this htaccess protection (aka not live) as you mentioned. Is that a single setting, which then prevents your entire site from being crawled by spiders? Will that work on my vBa portions of the site in my root folder (dynamics, link directory, etc...), in addition to my forums? Will the site otherwise function the same, it just won't get crawled by spiders? Is there a particular naming convention for the URL, in relation to the actual live site, which vB finds acceptable? (I remember with my licensing they wanted to know the URL of my site.) Should I setup a subdomain of my actual domain: http://test.mysite.com?

B.) When you say to import the styles, I'm unfamiliar with how to do that without uninstalling and reinstalling them. I'm currently offering 5 different styles to my users. How do I go about exporting them from my test server, to then import into my live site - as painlessly as possible?

C.) Does your test site utilize the exact same database that your live site does, or a replica of it?

Thanks a bunch for the ideas!

Are there others who do this differently, or is this the accepted convention?

Thanks!
Jeff