I am the NetCommunity CMS lead (but not a Web designer or expert!) at a major hospital system using both NetCommunity and Raiser's Edge. We're about to begin work with BBNC in creating new skins (e.g. layouts) for a new look and feel of our site that reflects the Web site of the main hospital (the main hospital doesn't use NetCommunity). For the most part, our content remains the same--we're just changing the skins which requires new layouts and templates to fit within those layouts and contain our page content (text and image parts). We are working with our BBNC client manager on this solution but there are so many questions yet to be addressed. The big challenge is that I'm a fundraising professional, not a Web expert, and so it's hard for me to know what exactly has to be done and how it's done. The main question we're dealing with is creating a test environment on one of our servers where we can refine and apply the new skins to the entire site and then make adjustments as needed--all the while our current site remains up (BBNC doesn't include a test or developmental environment). Then, when finally we're happy with the test site look, we go live. I still haven't figured out how you go live from the test site in a way that preserves current URLs (we have many inbound links that we need to keep up) and keeps us in sync with Raiser's Edge. Perhaps it's just an issue of the test site index (with the new skins) overwriting the live index--just as you can overwrite one Microsoft Word document with another bearing the same name. I'm wondering if any one out there has gone through a BBNC skin flip and set up their own test environment to do so. How did the transition from the test server to the live server go and what exactly did you do throughout the process? Feel free to e-mail me offline at wyatt.hornsby at uhhospitals dot org.

 Thanks!