Using a Mirrored Site to Test Before Going Live?

[rbickett]

I am in the process of uploading my new site to a live production environment. My client currently has hosting and registration with a different host than the one I am building their new site on. I built the new site on my local development environment. Now, I want to build their site on their new web host, Dreamhost, using a domain mirror ("name.dreamhosters.com" to mirror their domain actual domain "name.com"). I am doing this so that they can test and play around with the site prior to the actual launch.

I've installed and setup Wordpress, etc. and the base install is running fine. I haven't imported any of the data from their current site. I am planning to get it setup before doing that.

Everything is working as it should on my local dev environment. However, my issue is that some of the functions appear to be working on the production site currently visible on the mirror domain, but there are several that aren't working. Would using the mirror be causing these issues? An example of one of the issues I am noticing is that I have a custom header that includes both a left and right widget area. They work fine on my local dev environment, but don't work on the mirror domain at Dreamhost.

Any thoughts or feedback on what the issues could be would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!