If it were mine, I'd save the site as a template and create a "test" version of it. Even though you'd have to duplicate changes manually from one enviro to the other, it would give you a safe place to first try any changes you need to make. Then, you may want to determine a site maintenance window where you can move new changes into production... pick a low use time. For example, maybe you'll notice that data entry has lulls every Thursday at noon, or Tuesdays at 9, or that specific times of day are very busy. Then you can decide that your maintenance windows will be during one of these times, and include that info on the site. Sure, you probably won't need it every week, but start with, a weekly maintenance window is a good idea, while your users are initially getting settled and finding bugs or creating change requests. After your system matures, you may be able to have a monthly maintenance window for pushing changes to production. As a developer, I feel very strongly about not making changes or testing changes directly in a production environment. Creating a test or dev environment gives you the ability to try out changes at a time that suits your schedule, then carefully deploy and unit test them in production during a maintenance window.
Hilary Stoupa
