WordPress Tool Kit Clone for Dev / Staging environment (separate cPanel account)?

[markus909]

I am trying to better understand the options I have to create development / staging environment with cPanel and WordPress

Overall there are a few approaches, e.g.

• completely manually by exporting/importing DB and copying and modifying files
• using a WP plugin to set up a staging environment
• using WP Toolkit as suggested here and use the clone feature How To Clone A Website In cPanel® | cPanel Blog

From my point of view a dev or staging environment should be

• in a separate DB, and not just different tables with a different table-prefix
• in a separate folder and not in a subfolder of public_html
• in a separate cPanel account
• easy to pull/push and even work as a last resort recovery solution

I never used the WP Toolkit Clone feature, however I do see a problem here. This will work only within the same cPanel account. It will create a subfolder in public_html which is just not a nice structure. Every website should be completely in it's own folder and not in the sub folder of another website.

What's a recommended way of doing this? Or am I missing something with WP Toolkit and the Clone feature.

For reference
I am on a reseller account, so I don't have full WHM control but rely on the hosting provider
Till now I did it with WPVivid a WordPress plugin that comes with a staging feature. However, while it worked on my previous non cPanel Hosting, it does not work anymore with the cPanel hosting.

 

[cPRex]

Hey there! WPT can only perform work inside the cPanel account for the user. There aren't any higher-level tools that would split a clone into a unique cPanel account. You can create a unique subdomain as part of the cloning process, and that separate directory structure will be independent from the live site:

WP Toolkit – Cloning a WordPress Website - Documentation from Plesk Knowledge Base

WP Toolkit – Cloning a WordPress Website: You may want to clone your WordPress website in one of the following situations: - Documentation - Plesk Knowledge Base

www.plesk.com

but it will still be under the same cPanel user.

 

[markus909]

Thanks for confirming this. From what I have learned so far, it is the best way to have DEV and LIVE system separated. My hosting provider also recommend to use a separate cPanel account for LIVE/DEV for security and simplicity. If one site gets hacked, the other one is still very well protected (different cPanel account).

Too bad that there is no option to get dev/staging sync (or clone) done in an easy way with cPanel

 

[cPRex]

I've forwarded that feature request over to the WordPress Toolkit team, so they are aware of the desire for this now!

 

[markus909]

Thanks a lot! I actually never even looked at this with other hosting management platforms - many hosting companies offer a staging feature out of the box (Siteground, Cloudways, Kinsta). All those are completely different kinds of hosting provider. Could be that it actually also just works because it's actually on the same user account. Not sure if LIVE / DEV are completely separated in those cases.

However, for security reason it probably is the way to go to have LIVE / DEV separated (but it costs convenience, and even cPanel license or require a higher hosting plan with more cPanel accounts at some point in time)