How to painlessly redesign a website?

Question

Search Engine Optimization

Good day.
The question of how to redesign the site in the most painless way has become very interesting.
Those. not only cosmetic changes are implied, but also editing the code for a shorter and more valid version. In other matters, cosmetic changes are also expected, but without changing the texts, NC and site structure.
I just often see that sites release a new design on a subdomain and only then switch to it as the main one.
Take, for example, the same pikabu.ru. The new design is available at new.pikabu.ru.
Does it have something to do with search engine optimization or just testing usability in this way?

Answer 1

Does it have something to do with search engine optimization or just testing usability in this way?

Of course this is just a ui/ux test. A project with a large audience risks losing it if the new design turns out to be inconvenient.
An excellent example is Kinopoisk, when Yandex bought it and redesigned it (I have never seen such a bad ui), many refused and it cost them a lot of money. They got the old one back but lost the audience for a while, which is a lot of money. Rolled out to a new domain, everything would be different.
Youtube is changing the interface and it has been a beta for a long time, but people do not perceive it.
It is not necessary to have a subdomain for this, it can be decided by user settings, cookies or something else. The main thing is that it is possible to include the old version.

Answer 2

Testing usability
Editing the code - refactoring - this is normal, you just need to test it before releasing it to production.
If you have a major design update, you can, for example, update it gradually, releasing small changes. Once a week - two.

Answer 3

1. Yes, that's right. Just testing it this way. The search engine sees identical sites and considers them copies or affiliates, and most likely does not add a copy to the search database at all.
You can disable indexing on a new subdomain during development by any means convenient for you - the easiest way is through robots.txt
2. Those who do the redesign for themselves and from one workplace usually deploy it on a local machine, for example, through an open server or denver. On the subdomain, those who work either at home or at work, and in order not to synchronize the site, usually do it on the hosting. And also to those who need to show intermediate results for approval.
3. On a subdomain, when redesigning, there are minor inconveniences in the form of absolute paths wired into configs, sprits, css ... Therefore, it is not the most convenient way if you need to quickly do something for yourself.

Answer 4

GITFLOW