[carpeperdiem]

Amy,

If I were you, I would clone your site into a /dev/ directory

The only pitfalls is that if you don't clone the database, any language variables that you edit will appear on the old (live) store.

So clone the database too for dev purposes, and KEEP A LOG of the language vars that you edit.

When you're ready to bring dev live, hopefully you have command line SSH access, as that makes this EXTREMELY easy....

just backup, make a tarball, etc... then expand whee you need it.

update the language vars and that's that.

This is not the ONLY way, but one way that preserves your live site and allows you to really test the new skin.

Good luck.

Jeremy