How do I update my template design w/o going offline?

My shop is going forward with a steadily increasing number of customers. However, I thing I've grown out my shoes. The template I choose when I launched isn't very easily manipulated and is kind of rigid in its design. In short, I want a fresh start. I want a new template and the ability to tweak it before the launch.

However, I don't want to bring my shop offline for maintenance, but still I know I'll have like thousand things to change with a new template that obviously takes some serious time. The perfect solution would be to install a new template, activate it only to me (admin) and, meanwhile, have the current template up and running for my customers.

Is this possible? Or how do you guys do when you're upgrading your design? Can I install a second version of Zen Cart on the same server (using cpanel), access the Zen Cart admin view, tweak the design without anyone interrupting, import my database from the older shop and simply replace the old one? My off time would in that case be brought to ~1h (hopefully), which of course is desirable.

Thanks in advance!

You're on the right lines. We install a copy of the original site, which can be done alongside the live version or, since we have our own servers, elsewhere, build and test the template, upload it to the live site and switch it over in the admin.

Pitfalls ... if you host it on the same site as your server, make sure you create a new database and point your configure files at that. When you copy the new template onto your existing site, don't forget to reset the layout boxes in the admin once you've enabled the new template.

There's no need to replace the old template, just develop using a different template folder name and it will slot in alongside. When we install a new template and switch across, we generally keep the downtime to somewhere between a few seconds and absolutely none at all.

Thanks for the quick reply! Can I install Zen Cart on my local computer somehow? Or... no, perhaps not. I have to install like hundreds of apps and stuff right? I have a cpanel/fantastico webhost from which I installed Zen Cart the first time (very easy). But I don't dare install it again using this method due to the fact that everything is automated. "What if"...

Anyhow, I understod approx 3% of the technical stuff after "pitfalls..." :) Can you (or someone else) elaborate, like to five year old, which approach is the best if you don't have your own server? In my own pretty limited mind I figure I can unpack/install it on my own computer, upload everything to (uhm) /public_html/ZEN2/, and login on https://www.mysite.com/ZEN2/admin/, do my tweaks and stuff and move a couple of folders to /public_html/includes/, login to mysite.com/admin/ and switch template.

Bump...

I seriously don't understand how to do it...

What you want to do is basically the same as is described in this FAQ Entry, except that you would first:

1. make copies of your database (using whatever tool your webhost makes available for doing this, usually phpMyAdmin)
2. copy your files to another folder, or a subdirectory of your site
   then you change the copy as explained in the FAQ Entry

Thanks again for your help, although I seem to be somewhat slow. Especially after reading your post for an hour and a half, the FAQ for two and actually trying to understand what's going to happend in every step. I looked into phpMyAdmin and was terrified. Looked under Export and Operations, but everything seems to be written in a foreign language. In my mind it seems so easy, but I just cant sort it out.

1. I'll copy my database somehow (phpMyAdmin is out of the question), most likely via cpanel --> Backup --> Database and save it as a file.
2. Try to unpack the single file (sql) from step one somehow on my computer
3. Create a folder named [newsite] under /public_html/ and extract the content of the single file from step 2
4. go to mysite.com/newsite/admin and log in
5. change whatever as my shop is running along in the background
6. Somehow (using the FAQ) go offline, copy something and change something else to get my newsite up and running

There's a whole lot of "somehow" and "something" that I'll have to sort out first though; I seem to be missning the basic skills to be doing this. I just figured out (i think) that the so called database is my complete shop(?)... however, this revalation kind of gets mixed up with the use of "database" in the addon "Database Backup Manager - MySQL" that I use, presumably to backup my catalogue.