What I have is a copy (what I call my test bed) of my online website running on my own computer complete with Apache server running from the server root ip 127.0.0.1
I can make code/programming changes to various files in a php editor, alter the look of the forum etc.
After I'm satisfied that the modification(s) work and do not affect the operation of other parts of the forum, I then upload those changes to the online forum files.
This way the down time when the board is offline is reduced to a minimum:
After the change from HTTP to HTTPS there was an issue with posting youtube videos:
I used the PHP editor to modify this area of the class_parser file:
I then saved the changes "on the fly" without shutting the forum down.