Please note we do not accept any responsibility for any unintended consequence of following or failing to follow these instructions.  These instructions if followed correctly will duplicate your current Magento store without harming it in any way.  However failure to follow these instructions correctly could result in significant harm to your live install.  If you are not confident following these instructions then you should not undertake this HowTo. 

We offer this as a professional service - if you wish for us to undertake this duplication please contact us via the usual support channels.

Requirements :

Your live site should be fully backed up before attempting this
DNS is pointing at the VPS
Shell access
Magento is in web root. If the Magento install is not in web root then you will need to add the subdirectory to all the file paths.

Step 1 : Create the domain in Plesk

Create New Domain of the format : dev.domain_name.com where your live domain is domain_name.com

Add a database
Make a note of all login details.
(Further information if required)

Step 2 : Access the shell

Ensure /bin/bash shell access is enabled in your Hosting Account (Setup -> Shell access to server with FTP user's credentials - /bin/bash)
Access your VPS using Putty logging in as the new domain user.

Step 3 : Duplicate files

Shell Commands :

You will need to replace DEV.DOMAIN_NAME.COM and DOMAIN_NAME.COM as appropriate.

cd /var/www/vhosts/DEV.DOMAIN_NAME.COM/httpdocs/
cp -r /var/www/vhosts/DOMAIN_NAME.COM/httpdocs/* /var/www/vhosts/DOMAIN_NAME.COM/httpdocs/.ht* /var/www/vhosts/DEV.DOMAIN_NAME.COM/httpdocs/ 
chown -R DEV_FTP_USERNAME:psacln /var/www/vhosts/DEV.DOMAIN_NAME.COM/httpdocs/* /var/www/vhosts/DEV.DOMAIN_NAME.COM/httpdocs/.ht* 

(Ignore any errors relating to plesk-stat or var/cache/mage...).

Step 4 : Duplicate Database

Shell Commands :

Dump a copy of the live database

cd /var/www/vhosts/DEV.DOMAIN_NAME.COM/private/
mysqldump -u LIVE_DB_USERNAME -pLIVE_DB_PASSWORD LIVE_DB_NAME > LIVE_DB_NAME.sql

Import it into the new dev database

mysql -u DEV_DB_USER -pDEV_DB_PASSWORD DEV_DB_NAME < LIVE_DB_NAME.sql
rm LIVE_DB_NAME.sql

Step 5 : Point dev domain at duplicated database and update base URLs

Edit file : /var/www/vhosts/dev.domain_name.com/httpdocs/app/etc/local.xml
(If unsure use Plesk CP -> File Manager -> Navigate to file -> Pencil Image )
Change db_name, db_username, and db_password from live_db settings to the dev_db details.
Save the file.

Using Hosting Control Panel / phpMyAdmin :
Login -> Home/Domains -> dev.domain_name.com -> Databases -> database -> DB WebAdmin
Click on core_config_data
Click on the Search tab
Enter %base_url in path and click Search/Go
Change all entries to point to dev.domain_name.com
(Further information on using  phpMyAdmin)
Reset the magento cache using the  "Magento Cache Reset" button for dev.domain_name.com

Step 6 : Enable caching and Magento Connect

Configure file permissions and the pear.ini

find /var/www/vhosts/DEV.DOMAIN_NAME.COM/httpdocs/ -type d -exec chmod 775 {} \;
find /var/www/vhosts/DEV.DOMAIN_NAME.COM/httpdocs/ -type f -exec chmod 664 {} \;
chmod a+x /var/www/vhosts/DEV.DOMAIN_NAME.COM/httpdocs/pear
/var/www/vhosts/DEV.DOMAIN_NAME.COM/httpdocs/pear mage-setup .

TEST REPEATEDLY!
Note : All absolute links entered into the CMS component of Magento will remain wrong.
Login details should be changed so that the logins for the dev site are different to the live site.
Consider using "Protected Directories" to prevent viewing of the dev site.

~Paul

Does anyone else feel they are being ripped off by Nublue ? Does anyone else have experience of Evohosting (and how I would go about transferring my website).

www.dermacaredirect.co.uk

Bhavin

We've seen in the past that various web-robots can consume large amounts of bandwidth on a Magento store, this can happen when a web-robot becomes stuck in infinite loops on your website. These infinite loops can be caused by custom scripts, but are most often caused when Session ID's are served with each URL that is indexed.

The frequency which web-robots visit your website, as well as specifically what they index, can be managed using a robots.txt file. We've explored creating and configuring a robots.txt file for a Magento store in the past here.

However, not all web-rebots choose to take note of a robots.txt file; Googlebot in particular prefers that you configure its behaviour directly, within a Google Webmaster Tools account.

In this guide we explore how you can configure an existing Google Webmaster Tools account to control how Googlebot interacts with your Magento store.

The first step in this process is to login to your existing Google Webmaster Tools account. If you do not have an account then you may find is worthwhile creating one, as Google provide several useful tools that allow you to gather information about your website.

Once logged in to your Google Webmaster Tools account you need to select the website you wish to manage. To do this, simply click on your domain.

From here, you will be presented with a list of controls for your domain. Within Google Webmaster Tools we will look to set a custom crawl rate for Googlebot, as defined in the aforementioned robots.txt file, which Googlebot will then take note of.

To do this, from the left hand side-bar select 'Site Configuration' and then click the 'Settings' button from the drop down menu.

Under 'Crawl rate' select 'Set custom crawl rate', this will load a new interface allowing you to set a the rate which Googlebot should crawl your website. We would advise that you set a custom crawl rate of 30 seconds, to do this you can either drag the slider as desired or type '30' into the 'seconds between requests' text box.

Hit the 'Save' button and that's it! You're all done!

I recently started a hosting plan at NuBlue for my Wordpress site.

I used a few of the video tutorials you have online, and they are great, however, I experienced a few problems when entering new posts onto the Wordpress site. I kept getting the following error when trying to insert an image to the post :

I found a fix for this in the Wordpress forum, that seems to be fairly common across some hosts, this is what I did : test

1. Using my FTP software, I was using Coda, I had to manually create the /uploads/ folder

2. Then by changing the settings (right click the folder) of the /uploads/ folder to have a Octal of 777, I was able to edit the folder outside of system (in this case, inside Wordpress), I can now add images directly from my computer instead of uploading the image manually.

I have two stores set up - wholesale and retail.

I'm treating retail as the default store.

The problem is that when I change the price on the wholesale store (havving deselected 'Use Default View') this also seems to change the price on the default store. In fact the problem seems to affect more than just the price field.

Any ideas?

I seem to have lost the note of the nameservers for my website.

I'm on Shared10 if this helps.

Thank you.

I've tried everything in the forums, suggestions, tips etc but can't seem to make it work. I've set up the wp-config file, tried removingeverything, downloaded Wordpress for the third time and uploaded all again and still the same issue.

I don't think it's a nublue thing, so I must be not doing/doing to get this pop up everytime rather than the install prompt?

The domain is www.breadriots.com if anyone can help....please? help out a girl in need....

Any thoughts?

(oh, I've looked at the Nublue install video over and over but it doesn't seem to give anything away, I'm uploading to the httpdocs folder for the domain.)

I want to know where I login to my webpanel and when I get informations regarding this?

R

We're testing some nice new application installers to roll out across our Hosting platforms - they are little programs that sit inside your hosting control panel, and give you the option to install a number of different applications with a few clicks.  We've narrowed it down to two different offerings, and would like some input from the people who would be using them before making our decision!

If anyone is interested in trialling these app installers, please contact the support team and register your interest.  We'll add it to your account, it won't cost a thing and it won't involve any downtime whatsoever.

What we are looking for are current NuBlue Hosting clients who:

• * Install applications on a regular basis
  * Would be looking to install Magento, and a number of other applications
  * Would be willing to provide feedback on the use of the installer
  * Would be happy to go through this process on both solutions

It doesn't matter what platform you are on - Shared, VPS and Dedicated Clients are equally than welcome.

Ideally you'd also be willing to take a few minutes out of a day or two and install a few applications just for testing purposes!

So if this is of interest to any of our clients, please, get in touch!  In return you'll get our eternal gratitude (and possibly a branded NuBlue mug if you're really helpful)!

Step 1 : Configuring Magento

You can use this  guide for an explanation of how multiple stores work and can be configured within the Magento admin panel.  You should create your multiple websites/stores first here as you will need these settings when you are configuring the passthrough index.php in your webspace.

Step 2 : Configuring Plesk

To enable a multistore setup within Plesk you specifically need to relax OpenBaseDir restrictions to allow different domains on the server to talk to each other.  This can only be done by the use of custom configuration files within your Plesk domain configuration, and you can only write custom configuration files as root.

Once you have become the root user you should navigate to the following directory of your first "child" store :

cd /var/www/vhosts/CHILD_DOMAIN_NAME/conf

If you check the contents of this directory you will find a file named httpd.include, this is the configuration file for the domain and should not be touched as Plesk will frequently rebuild and rewrite this file.

We are going to create two files, both with identical content, the first file covers http requests, the second https (encrypted) requests.

The first file to be created is vhost.conf, and to create it using vim you would type :

vim /var/www/vhosts/CHILD_DOMAIN_NAME/conf/vhost.conf

The following data (adjusted for your particular configuration) should be inserted into the text editor (To start typing in Vim simply press "a", then everything you type will pushed to the screen).  You should type this data manually rather than pasting as all lines and line breaks should remain intact, and this will not happen if the data is pasted.  Please note that there are only three lines.

<Directory /var/www/vhosts/CHILD_DOMAIN_NAME/httpdocs>
php_admin_value open_basedir "/var/www/vhosts/CHILD_DOMAIN_NAME/httpdocs:/var/www/vhosts/PARENT_DOMAIN_NAME/httpdocs:/tmp"
</Directory>

Once you have entered this data you can save and exit from Vim with the following command sequence : ESC : w q RETURN (Escape Key, Colon, w, q and then return)

You should then repeat the above process for the SSL configuration file :

vim /var/www/vhosts/CHILD_DOMAIN_NAME/conf/vhost_ssl.conf

After the two files have been created its necessary to alert Plesk to the presence of these files, you can do this by running the following command :

/usr/local/psa/admin/bin/websrvmng -a -v

If you receive any error after running this command you should delete the two files created, then rerun the command.  If you still receive errors you should contact support immediately as its possible that your web server will no longer be running

Assuming you received no errors you should continue.

Step 3 : Adding a passthrough index.php to the child domain

The following file (index.php) needs to be reconfigured to your needs and added to the web root of the child domain :

$mageFilename = '/var/www/vhosts/PARENT_DOMAIN/httpdocs/app/Mage.php';

if (!file_exists($mageFilename)) {
    if (is_dir('downloader')) {
        header("Location: downloader");
    } else {
        echo $mageFilename." was not found";
    }
    exit;
}

require_once $mageFilename;

umask(0);
Mage::run('STORE/WEBSITE_CODE', 'TYPE');

This file can be edited in your usual editor and uploaded to the web root, created via the Plesk File Manager or you can even create it using Vim!

You should now be able to navigate to the child domain and view the appropriate Magento storefront that was configured on the parent domain.

Hello from the team at Parties Unwrapped Ltd. We are multi-channel online retailers of fancy dress outfits, kits, footwear and balloons.

We have been trading for over 7 years on marketplace websites such as Amazon, Play.com, Pixmania, EBay and of course our own website http://www.partiesunwrapped.com which runs on Magento hosted by NuBlue.

Our multi-channel inventory is controlled by some great middle-wear from Linnworks which ensures we can hold efficient stock levels without holding dedicated stock per channel or risk overselling an item as Linnworks automatically adjusts our inventory across all channels every time we make a sale. Linnworks is 100% Magento compatible using the Magento API.

Darren

Visit: www.classicwheelsirl.com to see more...