Temp/Staging Site

  • [Moderator note: moved to Networking WordPress sub-forum]

    Hello:

    I have current site hosted on our internal server using IIS. The site is in the CMS known as Umbraco. It has its own IP/URL. For the sake of clarity lets call that URL https://www.hompage.com

    Also on this IIS Server are ~5 other sites created with WordPress. These each have their own IP/URLs.

    I have been asked to create, on this IIS server, a new site in WordPress to replace the Umbraco based https://www.homepage.com site.

    I have some restrictions:

        I cannot remove the old site until the new site is ready to go live.
        I have to host the site on the same IIS server as the other WordPress sites.

    Will enabling Multisite on an IIS server with other non-multisite WordPress installations effect the pre-existing WordPress installations?

    How can I develop a WordPress multi-site and then migrate the URL from the old Umbraco site to the new WordPress multi-site?

    If you have any good suggestions or links to sites with information that is newer than 2014 I would be grateful for the help.

    Thank you for your help,
    BC

    • This topic was modified 7 years, 7 months ago by bdbrown.
Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)

  • > Will enabling Multisite on an IIS server with other non-multisite WordPress installations effect the pre-existing WordPress installations?

    If you configure your IIS server correctly, all WP sites should be separate. Configuring one or more WP sites to be multisite doesnt affect others.

    > How can I develop a WordPress multi-site and then migrate the URL from the old Umbraco site to the new WordPress multi-site?

    Create and install WP using the same hostname, https://www.homepage.com with new IP address <wp ipaddress>. DNS should resolve https://www.homepage.com to the <umbraco ipaddress>. WP developers should modify their desktop/laptop /etc/hosts file to point https://www.homepage.com to <wp ipaddress>. Developers can update WP without affecting production. When you are ready to go live, update DNS to point https://www.homepage.com to <wp ipaddress>

    Thread Starter Richard Krone

    (@rkrone)

    Hello:

    Thank you for taking the time to respond to my questions.

    I did not believe that I would have any issues with regard to the first question of WordPress multi-site interfering with other WordPress installs. Thank you for confirming this.

    As for the second question of using a temp URL to stage a WordPress site I have a few more questions. I am new to this so please be patient with me.

    :: Steps as far as I understand ::

    Step 01 – Create new IIS website with new publicly accessible IP.

    Step 02 – Install WordPress to new IIS website with the new IP.

    Step 03 – Bind https://www.newsite.com to the new IP address? Will this interfere with the existing public production site that is currently using the URL? Sorry if this seems like a dumb question.

    Step 04 – Change /etc/hosts file to point https://www.homepage.com to the development site’s IP address. (Will this make it impossible to edit or reach the production site of the same URL?)

    Step 05 – Going Live! Update the real DNS record with with network admin to point the A-records domain name from the old IP to the new IP.

    Thank you for your time. I wonder why this isn’t something that is part of the WordPress documentation. If it is please tell me what I site I can read.

    Once more thank you,
    BC

    > Step 03 – Bind https://www.newsite.com to the new IP address? Will this interfere with the existing public production site that is currently using the URL? Sorry if this seems like a dumb question.

    You mentioned that the hostname should be https://www.homepage.com. So when you install WP, you should install it on that very same hostname. The main site hostname is difficult to change so set it to whatever your production hostname will be. This wont affect production, because (public) DNS will never route traffic to your new WP site (it has a completely different IP address). You can name your WP site https://www.google.com or https://www.microsoft.com&#8230; DNS will never route to your WP system. But you can trick your PC/laptop by modifying your /etc/hosts file (that overrides DNS).

    This is not part of WP documention. It is a DNS trick. We use it all the time at our enterprise (USC).

    All your other steps look correct. Just make sure your hostname is the same in step 3 and step 4.

    Thread Starter Richard Krone

    (@rkrone)

    Note: I wanted to thank jkhongusc for his accurate and fast help. His suggestions appeared to be just what I needed to create a new WordPress site for development internally while allowing the production site, with the same URL, to exist live.

    Once more, thank you!

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
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