Softaculous Staging is a feature that allows you to create a staging environment for your website, enabling you to test upgrades and changes before pushing them to your main installation. This article will guide you through the process of staging a website using Softaculous in cPanel, as well as pushing changes from the staging site to the live site.
While this article is oriented for WordPress - the process is similar for other supported applications such as Joomla.
- Log in to your cPanel.
- Click on "Softaculous Apps Installer" under the "Software" group in your cPanel. You can also use the search function at the top of your cPanel account to find it quickly.
- Open All Installations on your Top Right Menu.
- Click on the "Create Staging" icon (a small "S" icon) next to your installation.
- Fill in the details in "Choose Installation URL":
Choose Protocol: If your site has SSL, choose HTTPS.
In Directory: Choose the directory where you want to stage the website, e.g., domain.com/stage. If you are installing into a subdomain you may want to use the directory blank.
If you wish to use a subdomain and you do not see it in the list you will need to make sure that you've added it to your cPanel first. - Set a "Database Name" or leave it as is. Database names will be picked at random.
- Tick "Disable Search Engine Visibility" if you do not want it to be visible to search engines.
- Enter your "Site Name" for the staging site.
- Click "Create Staging" to complete the process.
And you are done!
Push to Live
To push your content from staging to live go to your Current Installations in Softaculous.
Click Push to Live icon to begin the process.
If you want to customize your Push to Live go to the Customize tab and change any options you wish to change otherwise you can simply click the "Push to Live" button.
