Making site changes/updates after launching/publishing website on 7.1

How do I make changes and update a website after I launch and publish it?  Is there a process or best practices?  Do I have to take it offline?  I'm not talking about a site redesign,  just regular updates and additions. 

It depends on the kind of change you are making.

A simple change like correcting a spelling error you're just going to go in and fix the page live.

For a more involved restructuring of a page you will probably want to duplicate the page into the not linked area, make your changes, then swap it in for the live page when you're ready to make the new page live. The trick there is to manipulate the URL slugs to that the new page takes on the slug of the old page.

Thank you for your help @creedon.  I was hoping something like this was the answer. 

If I end up duplicating and swapping out pages, can you comment on how to change url slugs?  I know there is a danger of leaving dead-end urls out on the web which result in 404 errors.  I would like to avoid that when I make a change.

Also, I have a "In The News" page that is a running list of new news items, built as  image blocks with news outlet logos which are hyperlinked to the external news story.  If I want to add a new one, should I do that live or use the "duplicate and swap the page" process?

Thanks again for your help.

Thanks so much!  Very helpful. 

how do you make changes to a live page within 7.1? all that i can see is the option to reuse a template or copy the link? where do i find access to the edit screen, post publication? thank you!

2 hours ago, jmareerandle said:

how do you make changes to a live page within 7.1?

You should be seeing an EDIT button in the upper left of the page in the editor.

But how do you test changes to the global headers/footers without breaking the live site ? I used to work with Yahoo hosting where you would develop on a private copy, then publish again the whole site when it is ready. Can't do that with Squarespace ?

4 hours ago, ChrisBP said:

Can't do that with Squarespace ?

Squarespace does not use a staging/production server model.

The closest you could get with Squarespace would be to duplicate the site and work on the duplicate, then manually transfer the changes back to the original.

If you can't dupe the site then you could create a trial site and work on the new header there.