How to keep production users intact after major release from Dev. environment?

Hi support

Generally, If I have many changes in my dev. environment (e.g Template changes, menu structure aso.), how do you propose to release the changes in production and still keep the production data intact (Profiles, posts aso.)?

Would you recommend to backup entire production site to dev. environment, perform the major changes in dev. environment and than copy entire dev. environment back to production? How to keep production users changes intact in meantime?

Your function to export users + data, would be perfect if they could be imported again, but this is not implemented yet as I understand?

Thanks for a great product.

Peter