One cPanel Solo license / WordPress Toolkit question

[benjaminb]

Hi all,

I am a self-employed, full-time freelancer WordPress designer / developer who has managed (usually shared, basic) hosting for a while now. My cPanel experience comes from those. One site I manage, develop, and pretty much everything else, is a VPS at InMotion Hosting. With that, I can spend $50 for a year of Softaculous (all the shared hosting I've used already had Softaculous, but not with this VPS), or I was excited about WordPress Toolkit Premium, because it sounds like could help me with my staging / cloning / restoring needs, which are:

1. To clone into staging site(s)
2. Easily create / restore backup points of any of the instances
3. To push from a staging / clone to live, and when doing so
   1. Have option to overwrite live completely vs leave new / differences
   2. Have option to push all, or only database, or only code

I have been using a plugin or two for these and other related functions that the Deluxe Toolkit can do: All-in-one Migration Tool, and WP Staging Pro. The latter ended up not doing exact mirror copies of pushing from a clone to live, along with lots of problems that would happen in the process. My best experience with all of this is when I do work for a certain agency who uses WP Engine. There, it's exactly like I need in other places, where migrating to WP Engine isn't an option currently. With that, at any moment I can push and pull from any of the three environments to any of the three environments, for one site. If i make a mistake, say I managed to copy the wrong one to live...a few clicks and live is restored exactly as it was.

One site in particular is extremely complex, and I need to have full confidence in those things, and am looking at Toolkit Premium. Does anyone here have any opinions of Softaculous vs Toolkit Premium? Softaculous has been around a while, but also maybe is a bit dated? Toolkit Premium is literally brand new, as far as I know. Softaculous is 50/ a year, and Toolkit, for one solo, is $90.

For that Solo license, to upgrade the WordPress Toolkit to premium in my VPS hosting cPanel, will i only, strictly be able to use it there? The cart wouldn't let me buy 2. I don't need 5, but 2 might be what I need right now.

Any opinions or experiences with any of these is more than welcome.

Thanks,
Ben

 

[cPanelTJ]

Hi Ben,

With WordPress Toolkit, any site can be cloned and any clone or site can be copied to an existing site in an effort to push updates from a clone or development/staging site. Not only does WordPress Toolkit include a feature to backup sites, but with all important actions (such as copying data from a clone, applying updates, etc.) there is the opportunity to create a Restore Point.

When copying data from a site to another, you are provided with a choice to copy the entire database, only specific parts of the database, or nothing from the database. Site changes are completely copied during this process.

One other very valuable feature of WordPress Toolkit is Smart Updates, which creates a temporary clone, applies updates based on your site's settings, and then allows you to compare the changes side-by-side in the UI (see video below). Only after accepting these changes will the updates be applied to the live site.

We did a live demo of WordPress Toolkit back in November that walks through a lot of the features you're curious about.

Here is the link to the full video: https://youtu.be/s1Z339RM1n8

Specific time segments:
- UI Overview https://youtu.be/s1Z339RM1n8?t=405
- Cloning a Site https://youtu.be/s1Z339RM1n8?t=971
- Smart Updates Site Comparison https://youtu.be/s1Z339RM1n8?t=1163

 

[benjaminb]

Thank you for the info and reply! Very helpful.

Cheers,
Ben