Working with a Staging Site

If you have a production website and are planning major site changes,
consider setting up a staging site — a separate location on the server
where you can conveniently update and test a copy of the site before
putting it into production.

We recommend that you work with a staging site in the following way:

1. Decide where you want to host the development copy and prepare the
   development environment. You can choose to host it in the same
   subscription, in a separate subscription on the same server, or
   upload it to an FTP account on another server.

   If you choose the same subscription, then you first need to set up a
   new website by adding a domain or a subdomain.

2. (Optional step.) If you set up your development environment under
   your account in Plesk and your production site has APS applications
   installed via Plesk (at the Applications section), install the
   desired site applications in your development environment in the same
   subdirectory as you have on your production site. This step is
   optional; however, it will help you avoid changing manually database
   connection settings in the application scripts.

3. Make a copy of the website and place it in the staging environment.

4. Make copies of the databases used by the site and deploy them in the
   staging environment.

5. Change database connection settings in the scripts to point at the
   databases in the staging environment.

6. (Optional step.) Complete APS applications setup. Go to the
   Applications section for your development site, locate the
   application in the list of installed applications, open its
   Settings screen and re-save the parameters. With this operation,
   the APS scripts should stop pointing at the production database and
   reconnect the application to the database copy. This step is needed
   if your production site has APS apps installed via Plesk and you
   performed Step 2 of the current instruction.

7. Make the required changes to the site copy in the staging
   environment, and test them to make sure everything works as intended.

8. Publish the updated site. This is done by pointing the document root
   of the production site to the staging site location.

To set up a site for staging purposes:

1. Go to Websites & Domains.

2. Click either Add Domain or Add Subdomain.

   We recommend that you use a subdomain for staging purposes.

3. Proceed as described in Adding Domains or <a class="reference…