Cloning 1.5 before Upgrading

[kmoravec]

Our club has a website running Joomla 1.5.18 on GoDaddy

The guy that got it running a few years ago is gone.
The current webmaster just quit.

I got "volunteered" to upgrade the website.

Since none of us know Joomla, the board wants me to clone the website to a subdomain (e.g. http://test.abc.net as opposed to the current http://www.abc.net) (or an empty domain on another GoDaddy account I have if that is easier), and try to upgrade it there to make sure everything (extensions, modules etc.) upgrades correctly, before we try it on the real website.

Since none of us know the system, we do not want the real website to be down while we try to figure out why something did not upgrade correctly.

Now to the questions:

1. Since I am on GoDaddy would it be easier to clone it to a different subdomain, or a different account completely? Or should I try to clone it to a linux computer I have at my house? What is the best option?

2. Is there documentation that steps me through exactly how to clone the website? I am assuming it is more complicated than just FTPing all the directories from one place to another. I need step by step instructions. "Copy the data out of the database" is not good enough for me. Where is the database? How do I get the data? Where do I put it? etc. I really do not know what I am doing.

3. I did see there was some instructions for upgrading from 1.5 to 3. something in my google searches. So once I have it cloned, I can try to follow those instructions to see what landmines lie ahead. If I do it on the clone then I hope it will work the same on the real website, or I can clone the upgraded site to where the old site is. What is better?

Thanks,
Kip

[imanickam]

Review of the document https://docs.joomla.org/Copying_a_Joomla_website that would be of help.

Hope you have access to the cPanel of your host services to download the site files and to access the database (using tools such as phpMyAdmin) to export the database content.

1. Since I am on GoDaddy would it be easier to clone it to a different subdomain, or a different account completely? Or should I try to clone it to a linux computer I have at my house? What is the best option?

IMHO, as you are a novice in this situation, I would suggest using all together a different account. This would prevent some accidental mishaps.

Cloning on a separate Linux machine is a good choice. However, I wonder whether you could show the enhanced site to your staff, if there is any such requirement.

Another option could be to close the site on a Windows PC if you use it at work. You could create the environment to run Joomla! by installing software such as WAMP Server or XAMPP.

Hope this helps.

Note: Reviewing of the Technical Requirements (http://www.joomla.org/technical-requirements.html) would be of help.