I want to build a new responsive site in the background (leaving the legacy site up)and when finished , publish it live. Can this be done?

Not yet. I also understand why you want to do that

You can switch back and forth though. Or make a 'test' site to experiment with

Nope! Although that's a very good idea.

My best suggestion for now is build a new test site (just use your school name and a class nobody would be using, like 1901) and then "play" with the new Responsive Design until you're happy with how the site looks. This will give you a way to try various headers, sizes, colors, etc. Once you're happy with it you should be able to replicate it on your actual site in just a few minutes.

Thanks for the suggestion Fred.

Brad -- can you elaborate on how this can be done? Build a new test site using school name and unused class year?
Thanks.

Not Brad, but that's what I meant by test site.

Just create a "free" with ads site. Brad is saying to use your school name and a year not going to be used. That's because the internal name on CC with be "schoolname-year".

Except for the ads, it can be just like your site. Ads do mess with the layout a bit, unless you use certain add-ons

To start with, what you do is copy your home page (as shown in the Editor) and then in the "test" site paste that into that (Responsive) home page editor. Save and presto you can see how it looks on the Responsive Design. (I'm ignoring announcements here).

All your files will be coming from you old site. There may or may not be a lot of modifications required. Just depends on the type of html that's been used. Vanilla styles will need very little changing.

Btw, if you need to make adjustments it will take more than a few minutes to switch the things learned in the Responsive 'test' site to your actual site.

If there are no changes, it's pretty much instant since all you do is switch to the Responsive design.

Depends on the number of pages and the changes you had to make. Minimum probably 15 minutes if there are minor changes and average pages. Easily an hour if there are many changes.

You have to copy ALL the modified pages back from the test site to your live site IF there were changes.

All pretty easy though.

Let us know when you have your new design up, Fred. It is always great to see what others do. I changed two of my sites to RD shortly after it was available and since started a new site with it. It is my favorite simply due to ease of getting around, which is admin settings being in the upper right of the header always at hand rather than having to scroll down to find Admin Functions in the left menu.

Enjoy!

Hi Dick, Simply go to http://www.classcreator.com, start a new site with ads to work with RE (Responsive Design) until you are happy with the header, colors, title... all there is to set up. Then copy the settings into your site and you'll be set.

As Jack mentioned, after changing to RD look at each of your pages. I found some of the announcements on the home page needed adjusting as the width of the page was wider than the classic design I had been using. A tweak here and there was all I needed to do.

When I changed two of my sites, I did so with an "under construction" graphic on the home page and a short note as to changes they may see regarding the site design. I sat until I was okay with it and spiffed it up a few times since. It is probably still a work in progress.

Have fun!

mchenryalumni.com is one of the sites.

Jack and Gwen, thanks. I didn't know that it was still possible to create a new free site. Thanks again.