Unfortunately, the nature of the web server/client environment doesn't really lend itself to dynamic updates. I would be extremely leery of making major code base changes to a live site. If something goes wrong, everyone will know, and if you don't have a backup of your db and files, you're looking at rebuilding a site from scratch which could be devastating.
Actually, updating a drupal site doesn't really require the site to go down for a long time. You only need to take your site down while you copy over the new files and run the update.php script. Assuming nothing goes wrong, it shouldn't be down for more than ten minutes.
Also, if you have a lot of databases (or even just one) you should really be backing them up regularly anyway. I would suggest at least a nightly cron job to back up your databases. If you have an active site with a lot of critical data, hourly might be better - just make sure your server can handle it.
RE: Useful info and written in a playful style.
Hey, thanks for the comment!
Unfortunately, the nature of the web server/client environment doesn't really lend itself to dynamic updates. I would be extremely leery of making major code base changes to a live site. If something goes wrong, everyone will know, and if you don't have a backup of your db and files, you're looking at rebuilding a site from scratch which could be devastating.
Actually, updating a drupal site doesn't really require the site to go down for a long time. You only need to take your site down while you copy over the new files and run the update.php script. Assuming nothing goes wrong, it shouldn't be down for more than ten minutes.
Also, if you have a lot of databases (or even just one) you should really be backing them up regularly anyway. I would suggest at least a nightly cron job to back up your databases. If you have an active site with a lot of critical data, hourly might be better - just make sure your server can handle it.
Hope this helps!
Emily