Staging WebSite Without Subdomain

Benjamin Roberts

• November 22, 2016 09:14

In order to accommodate significant Web site updates affecting all aspects of the sites (e.g. content, code, databases, hosting configuration, etc) with as little interruption in availability as possible and the least post-launch adjustment possible, I would like to stage new (but not yet active) production Web sites on same cPanel server where the existing (legacy) Web sites are located and associated with the same domain, but without using add-on or sub-domains. That is, I would like to create multiple cPanel accounts associated with the same domain names, at least on the WHM cPanel server, but different public IP addresses and use DNS to control which are the "active" accounts or Web site instances of each based on how the names are resolved via internet DNS. Is it possible (and supported) to have two cPanel accounts associated with the same domain name, but using different public IP addresses? For example: cPanel Account #1 Domain: mydomain.com IP Address: 1.2.3.4 cPanel Account #2 Domain: mydomain.com IP Address: 5.6.7.8 Local host files would be used for testing purposes before the public DNS changes were made. Of course, this would affect public cPanel Web portal access through directory aliases such as mydomain.com/cpanel and other DNS related aspects of the corresponding cPanel accounts, which is understandable and acceptable.

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  Infopro

  • November 22, 2016 14:50

  Is it possible (and supported) to have two cPanel accounts associated with the same domain name, but using different public IP addresses?

  
  It's not. The easiest way to setup a staging environment, in my opinion, is to create a directory for it on the same account. domain.com domain.com/stage/ (password protected to keep private)

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  Benjamin Roberts

  • November 28, 2016 21:58

  @Infopro: Thanks for the suggestion. Yes, using a sub-directory and/or sub-domain often results creating related dependencies for projects/packages such as WordPress and others. Many of these, for better or worse (worse in this case), store directory and/or domain references in their databases, sometimes even serialized with the data length as part of the serialized values, and thereby create a bit of a mess when it comes to "flipping" a staged site into the production site when that entails changing the associated directory location and/or primary domain name. Fun times.

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