What is best practice for developing a full development environment site prior to going live?

I usually just go in and change all the broken image links --- and before with 1.x I avoided using the JCK / or upload image functions of the wysiwign when doing pages to avoid this ---

but now, with my latest site ...

I have hundreds of images to get in place....

and will be at

myhostingsite.com/newsite/index.php

to eventually be multihosted at

just newsite.com

but the newsite.com is their current live site ----

so all my uploaded images will be broken URLs when the site gets ported over from the DEV environment...

there will be lines like

img src="/newsite/images/myimage.gif"

when they should be

img src = "/images/myimage.gif"

So the question is what is the best way to develop a full site locally -- or on a dev server --- then flip one switch and go live!

?

THANKS.

I thought so too --- but it doesn't when you do a certain work flow ---
that work flow being..

1. Using JCE or FCK or JCK editors to upload the images and pull into content on the fly.
2. The links get inserted like this ...

for example at

http://coolsite.com

I am going to multihost --- otherNewSite.com...

so I would have

public_html/otherNewSite -- folder that will be the root after the switch...

but in DEVelopment its

http://coolsite.com/otherNewSite/index.php

so the JCK / JCE / FCK edtor inserts this

img src="/otherNewSite/images/myimage.jpg"

which is then IN the database --- so even though the automagically thing you described does happen if you use MOSIMAGE --- it doesn't if you use the editors ----

so I have just determined this ---

after using the edtior to upload I am clicking to source view and removing the HARD link to the site root -- and just deleting it bak to the images/ part ----

Also -- I referenced the MOSIMage -- but I am in 1.5 --- I assume the IMAGE button works the same way.

What is joomlapack?

All I ever do is just change the name from

mysite_dev folder to mysite....and then in teh 1.x days I would change the configuration files....

either way - the FCK and JCK editors hard code in the links...

I used JCE months ago and abandoned it for JCK --- but you may be on to something there --- if JCE does it fine -- I am on board...

It actually is not that bad tonight as I import images I am deleting back...

cuz it comes in

/mess/images/image.jpg

and I jus tmake it say images/image.jpg

so I think just posting about it made me rethink the best way.