How to stage websites via Softaculous

Updated on Sep 7, 2018

The new Softaculous Staging feature allows you to create a full copy of your website where you can preview any changes or upgdates before you apply them on your website. When you want to change or update your website, plugins or theme, it is highly recommended to do that on a Staging Version at first to make sure everything works as intended.

Softaculous Staging helps you to create, manage and push to a live environment staging copies with one click. It works for the most CMS systems, which are available in Softaculous. We fully support this easy to use feature on all of our hosting plans.

When you complete this tutorial you will be able to:

step

Create a Staging Environment

We will start with an existing WordPress installation. Open your cPanel → Softaculous App installer. You will also have to open your list of installations.

Accessing your softaculous installations

Once you open the list, choose the installation of which you want to create a Staging copy. Click on the Create Staging icon.

Initiating a staging via softaculous

Fill in the Staging Installation details:

  • Choose Protocol - If your site has SSL, then please choose the HTTPS protocol.
  • Choose Domain - The domain name on which you want to create the Staging.
  • In Directory - Here, you need to choose the directory where you want to see the staging of the website. For example domain.com/stagin.
  • DataBase Name - You can change the Database name or leave it as it is.

Creating a staging in softaculous

Once you fill in the details, click on the Create Staging button. You will now be able to see the login details for the Staging version of the website.

step

Push changes to Live Environment

Once you are satisfied with the changes in the Staging copy, you can Push them to your live website. To do that, you will have to again navigate to cPanel → Softaculous App installer → All installation.

Click on the Push To Live icon next to the corresponding Staging installation you wish to push to the live environment.

Accessing the staging configuration for your application

Next, you will see two tabs - Default Options and Customize. If you want to push the current staging website to the live version, the default option will:

  • Create a backup of your live website
  • Overwrite all the files in your live installation with the ones from your staging copy
  • Erase the database of your live installation and replace it with the one in your staging copy

Pushing staged content to live environment

The Cuztomize option will allow you to choose the exact changes you want to push from your staging copy to the live installation. You can choose if you want to:

  • Push only the Files
  • Push Full Database (includes structure changes as well as rows in the tables)
  • Only Database structure
  • Only Data from the database tables

Selecting which content to push to a live environment

Done! The staging version of the website will remain in your hosting account so you can either continue to make changes on it, push to live or completely remove it by using the delete option in Softaculous. And if you need further assistance with the Staging feature, you can always contact us.

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