I currently have a standard HTML site hosted on Lunarpages (www.juniorbaseballorg.com) . I want to rebuild the site using Joomla. I have installed Joomla 1.5 on my local machine in XAMPP. I have enough .pdf files to be a headache to deal with.  I have only started the transition of content from my old site to the Joomla site, so I am not too far into the process. I have a couple of  questions as to how to move forward.

1)  I want to keep my old site live until I launch the new improved Joomla site. Should I continue as I am on my local machine, and then move from the machine to the server for the launch of the new site? I am concerned about headaches with the transition from the local machine to the server.

2)  Is this really the easiest route, or is it possible to do a clean install of Joomla on the LP server, rebuilding the site while the old site is still live? At some point down the road, i take down the old site and launch the new one.

3) I can't find tutorials on LP about moving a Joomla site from a local machine to the LP server. Am I missing something, or do such tutorials not exist? I have been told my web host should have instructions for this.

4) Is it my imagination, or does LP only just tolerate Joomla users? Aside from this forum dedicated to 3rd party services, Info for Joomla seems hard to come by on LP. I have read elsewhere that other hosts cater to Joomla users but I have not done much shopping.  I am in the middle of a 3 year deal with LP, I would like to keep LP if I can.


Thanks
Todd