Publishing Site

Publishing your site as an anonymous user

If you do not have a Plesk Sitebuilder account and work with the program in demo mode, the site you create is temporary and cannot be published on the Internet until you register a regular user account in Plesk Sitebuilder and buy hosting from your Plesk Sitebuilder provider. On the Publish step of the Wizard, you will see a summary of your site details which may include the following information:

• The life-time of your trial site, i.e. the period during which it will be stored on the Plesk Sitebuilder server.
• The site preview link: the link to your temporary site as it is displayed to the visitors. You may send this link to your friends, for example.
• The link to your temporary site in editable mode. This link opens your site in the Wizard. You may need this link if you decide to register in Plesk Sitebuilder and upgrade your temporary site to a regular one.
• Any supplementary information considered to be important by your Plesk Sitebuilder provider, for example, instructions on how to obtain a regular user account in Plesk Sitebuilder and buy hosting services.

If you wish to send this information to your e-mail address, enter the address in the field at the bottom of the page and click Send.

To open the trial site in your web browser, click Visit Site. The site is available during its life-time period, which is determined by your Plesk Sitebuilder administrator.

Publishing your site as a regular Plesk Sitebuilder user

If you are a registered Plesk Sitebuilder user, follow the guidelines below to publish or publish your site.

To publish your site:

1. Go to the Publish step.
2. If your Plesk Sitebuilder administrator has already specified the publishing settings for your site (or you have done it yourself in your Administrator Panel), just click Publish. If publishing settings are not specified, perform steps 3-8.

   If you see a message telling that the publishing settings are not configured, contact your Plesk Sitebuilder administrator for assistance.

   If you see an error message after clicking Publish, contact your Plesk Sitebuilder administrator, or follow the link to the publishing details screen (if provided) to know the reason of the failure.

3. In the Edit publishing settings section, select a publishing mode (the list of available publishing modes is configured by your Plesk Sitebuilder provider):
   • FTP - publishing site to an FTP server.
   • VPS - publishing site to a Virtuozzo Container (formerly SWsoft Virtuozzo virtual environment).
   • XCOPY - publishing site using the XCOPY technology.

     Note: 1. VPS publishing mode is used for publishing to servers running Parallels Business Automation, Standard (formerly SWsoft HSPcomplete).

     2. We recommend using XCOPY technology for publishing on local Plesk Sitebuilder host only, as this method is insecure and requires writing permissions on the specified publishing location.

   Plesk Sitebuilder administrator can prohibit users from editing publishing settings. In that case publishing settings will be displayed to you in read-only mode.

4. If you select FTP publishing mode:
   • In the Host field, specify the host to which you want to publish the site.
     • If the maximum number of hosts allowed by your license is limited, select a host from the list. The list of available hosts is configured by your Plesk Sitebuilder administrator.
     • If the number of hosts allowed by your plan is Unlimited, you can specify the IP address or DNS name of any FTP server you have at your disposal (make sure that the server meets the requirements).
   • In the Port field, you can specify the port for connecting to the FTP server. By default, 21 is set.
   • In the Login and Password fields, provide your FTP server access credentials.
   • In the Working directory field, specify the directory on the server where the site content will be stored after publication.
   • In the Web site URL field, enter the web address where the site will be available after publishing.

     Note: Make sure that the Web site URL and the Working directory settings point to the same publishing location. For example, to publish site with URL http://test.url.com/myfolder, specify the working directory myfolder.

5. If you select VPS publishing mode:
   • In the Host field, enter the IP address or domain name of your Parallels Virtuozzo Container (formerly SWsoft Virtuozzo virtual environment).
   • In the Container ID field, specify an integer number of the Virtuozzo Container is identified it on the physical server.
   • In the User field, enter the name of the Apache user on the Plesk Sitebuilder machine (apache, www-data, etc.).
   • In the Group field, specify the name of the Apache group on the Plesk Sitebuilder machine (apache, www-data, etc.).
   • In the Working directory field, specify the absolute path on the Virtuozzo Container to the folder where the site content will be stored after publication.
   • In the Web site URL field, enter the web address where the site will be available after publication.

     Note: Using this mode you can publish sites only to servers running Parallels Business Automation, Standard (formerly SWsoft HSPcomplete).

6. If you select XCOPY publishing mode:
   • In the Working directory field, enter the name of a directory (with full path) where the files of your site will be stored after publication. For example, /var/www/yoursite.
   • In the Web site URL field, specify the web address where the site will be available after publication.
7. Click Publish, or place your mouse cursor in one of the fields and press ENTER. The progress bar appears displaying the status of the publishing process.

   After successful publishing, your site immediately goes live, and its full functionality is available to visitors. You can proceed to your site by clicking Visit Site.

Republishing your site

After you apply some changes to your site in Plesk Sitebuilder Wizard, you will need to republish your site.

To republish your site:

1. Go to the Publish step.
2. If you wish to preview the changes as they appear on your site, click the Preview site link.
3. If necessary, revise the settings in the Edit publishing settings section.

   Important: If a site contains modules, we do not recommend changing the FTP Login for FTP publishing mode. Changing your FTP login will change the home directory of the site, and the modules data, which is stored in the former home directory, may be lost. If you have access to your publishing server, you can move your modules data manually from the former home directory (the path on the server will be [Sitebuilder sites directory/Login1/Working directory]) to the new home directory ([Sitebuilder sites directory/Login2/Working directory]). If you have no access to the publishing server, or insufficient permissions for moving files, leave the FTP Login field as is, or contact your Sitebuilder administrator for assistance.

   If you see a notification that the publishing settings have been changed, you have an option of returning the settings to their previous state. To do so, click Revert Publishing Settings at the bottom of the section.

   If you do not wish to display the Edit publishing settings section again, click the icon to close the section. The next time you access the Publish screen for this site, the section is not displayed.

4. To apply changes to the site without republishing the whole site, leave the Republish the entire site content option unselected.

   Select this option, if you wish to recover your site in case it has been destroyed or damaged at the publishing location.

5. Click Publish, or place your mouse cursor in one of the fields and press ENTER.