How to stage websites via Softaculous

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.