How do I Test Mods & Hacks without Messing up my Live Site?

[NashChristian]

Hello,

What is the best, most accepted, and common means of testing new site features and functionality, mods, hacks, etc?

Do most of you have a second live instance of your site on the internet, which you just don't tell people about, used specificially for testing? If so, won't spiders still crawl the site and send traffic to you, although you don't want it?

Do most of you download all the server side programs locally (mySQL, PHP, Apache, etc...) necessary to setup a testing server locally, and then just keep one live instance on the web?

So far I've just been using one live instance, with no testing server, however when I make a mistake it sometimes can cost me some downtime. And often I tweak templates, that take me a while to correct and get exactly how I like. I hate to do all of this in real time on my site, where users are probably scratching their heads wondering what's going on.

The problem seems, even if I do use a testing server (whether local or online) that whenever I make template mods (and a lot of times I'm working with two or three templates at a time) it will be a pain to have to remember what I've done, and manually go in and make the exact same changes to the live site once the changes are determined to be what I want.

I'm sure that there is a protocol out there of how admins do this, PLEASE ADVISE!

Thanks a bunch!
Jeff