Using Plesk To Stage Websites

This knowledgebase explains how to use Plesk to stage websites.

Website Staging

In reality, a staging website is a visible, standalone copy of your main website. The hardware, software, and configuration of this website are identical to those of your actual website. As a result, the staging website comes in handy when you modify the content and coding of your main website. You can quickly setup a testing environment for your website with Plesk by following a few simple steps.

How to Set up the Website Staging Environment?

You may host the staging environment in your current Plesk webspace by registering a new domain or subdomain. For instance: You may make a staging.example.com subdomain and utilize it as a testing environment for your main domain, example.com.

# Steps to Copy The Website

You must transfer all of the data from the current production environment to the newly configured staging environment. To achieve this, take the following actions:

1. Log in to Plesk.

2. On the left sidebar of the Plesk panel, click on Websites & Domains.

3. Identify and locate the website that you want to copy and then click on Website Copying.

4. Under the Copy Destination section, select Website in Plesk.

5. In the drop-down list of the Site name, select the destination domain.

6. In the section for What to do with existing files, select what you want to perform with any files that may already exist on the destination domain.

7. Now click on the OK button. Plesk will copy the site to the destination domain.

#Steps to Copy Databases

If your website uses databases (or databases), then you must copy them all to the staging environment also. Perform the following steps to do so :

1. Log in to Plesk.

2. In the left sidebar for Plesk panel, click on Databases.

3. Identify and locate the database that you want to copy, and then click on the Copy button.

4. In the drop-down list box for the Destination database server, select localhost:3306.

5. In the section for Destination database, click on Create database with name, and then enter the name for the new database.

6. Select the checkbox for Create a full copy.

7. Click on OK. Plesk will copy the database.

# Steps to Publish the site

Once the testing of the staging environment is done, you can go live and publish your website. Perform the following steps to do so :

1. Log in to Plesk.

2. In the left sidebar for Plesk panel, click on Websites & Domains.

3. In the list of domains, identify and locate your production site, and then click on Hosting Settings:

4. In the text box for Document root, enter the directory for the staging site environment.

5. Click on OK button.

That’s it, you are done.