A staging area is a duplicate of your primary store that you can use to see if the upgrade process will go smoothly, and also allow you to use both the frontend and backend of your site to see if everything is running properly.

This article is written with our clients in mind, but the principles will apply no matter where you are hosted or what control panel you’re using.

Jump To Section

• Create Staging Subdomain
• Create Staging Database
• Copy Production Store
• Update Configuration
• Upgrade Staging Store
• Cleanup & Permissions
• Professional Upgrade Service

Create Staging Subdomain

The first thing we want to do is setup a subdomain for our staging store:

1. Login to cPanel for your domain, and click on the Subdomains icon.

2. For both the Subdomain and Document Root, we’ll enter staging.

3. Click on the Create button.

Create Staging Database

While we’re still in cPanel, let’s setup a blank database for our staging store:

1. Go back to the main screen for cPanel, and click on the MySQL Database Wizard icon.

2. For the New Database, we’ll enter staging.

3. Click on the Next Step button.

4. For the Username, we’ll enter staging, and for the Password, enter whatever you’d like here.

5. Click on the Next Step button.

6. Click on the box next to ALL PRIVILEGES.

7. Click on the Next Step button.

Copy Production Store

Now that our subdomain and database has been setup, we ned to copy our production store over to the subdomain directory.

1. Login to SSH for your domain, and change to the staging folder:

   • cd staging/

2. Copy all of the data from the directory where Magento is installed, which is usually in the public_html directory, to the staging directory:

   • cp -R ../public_html/* ../public_html/.htaccess .

For the next step, you’ll need to know the database information for the production store. If you don’t remember this, open up the following file:

• app/etc/local.xml

Lines 43-46 will contain your hostname, username, password, and database name.

Next, we need to copy the data from the production database over to our staging database. We’ll be doing this from SSH as well.

• mysqldump -u PRODUCTION_DBUSER –p PRODUCTION_DBNAME > data.sql

You’ll be prompted to enter the password for the user that has privileges to the production database, so type that in and hit the Enter key.

This can take a couple seconds to a couple minutes depending on the size of your database, so just wait until it finishes.

Once it finishes, we need to import this data to our staging database:

• mysql -u STAGING_DBUSER –p STAGING_DBNAME < data.sql

Just like before, you’ll be prompted to enter a password, but this time it will be for the user who has privileges for the staging database.

Update Configuration

Using your favorite text editor, open up the following file from the staging directory:

• app/etc/local.xml

Replace the values for lines 44-46 with the database details for our staging database.

Now we need to do is update the Unsecure and Secure URL for our staging store:

1. Login to cPanel for your domain, and click on the phpMyAdmin icon.

2. From the sidebar on the left, click on the _staging link.

3. Click on the SQL tab, and in the text area, run the following command:

   • SELECT * FROM `core_config_data` WHERE `path` LIKE '%base_url%';

4. Click the Check All link and then click on the pencil icon.

5. Update the value fields with the URL for your staging site.

6. Click on the Go button at the very bottom to save your changes.

Upgrade Staging Store

Now that our staging store is setup, we can upgrade it to make sure everything goes smoothly. These commands will be done via SSH in the staging directory.

A little cleanup first:

• rm -rf downloader/pearlib/cache/* downloader/pearlib/download/*

Set the permissions on the pear file so we can run it:

• chmod 550 pear

Initialize the PEAR channel just in case:

• ./pear mage-setup .

And then we can upgrade:

• ./pear upgrade-all

If it tells you that there’s Nothing to upgrade, you’ll need to do this instead:

• ./pear install magento-core/Mage_All_Latest

Cleanup & Permissions

Lastly, we need to clear out any temporary and cached data. These commands will be done via SSH in the staging directory.

• rm -rf downloader/pearlib/cache/* downloader/pearlib/download/*
• rm -rf var/cache/ var/session/ var/report/ media/tmp/

And then reset our file and directory permissions:

• find . -type f -exec chmod 644 {} \;
• find . -type d -exec chmod 755 {} \;
• chmod o+w var var/.htaccess app/etc
• chmod 550 pear
• chmod -R o+w media

You can now open up your staging site in your browser to see if the upgrade process worked or not.

After You Upgrade

After you upgrade your store, don’t assume everything is working correctly because your site is coming up without errors. Use this time wisely to go through your entire site, including the backend:

• If your navigation has dropdown items, make sure they work
• Search for a product to see if anything comes up in the results
• Make sure you can add a product to your cart and purchase it
• Check if your layered navigation is intact
• Create or edit an existing product, making sure you can save it

If you do come across any errors, check the community forum to see if others are experiencing the same issue.

If you can’t find anything, create a new thread to see if anyone can assist you.

It’s also a good idea to search the bug tracker. You can even help by submitting a new bug if you don’t find anything.

Professional Upgrade Service

Need help upgrading your store? Crucial offers a professional upgrade service to our clients.

To learn more about this service, please login to the account center and submit a ticket to the Magento department.

This article is written with cPanel in mind, though the methodologies listed below apply no matter what control panel you’re using.

Jump To Section

1. URL Structure
2. Shared Hosting Caveat
3. Adding Another Store In Magento
4. Parked Domain Method
5. Addon Domain Method
6. Subdomain Method
7. Subdirectory Method
8. Managing Multiple Stores
9. Secure Checkout For Each Domain

URL Structure

The actual URL structure of your stores is a matter of personal preference. You can, for example, have two entirely different stores running on the same domain that share the same instance of Magento:

• mall.com/shoes
• mall.com/shirts

These stores could also be setup on their own domain and still share the same instance of Magento:

• shoes.com
• shirts.com

Another example would be a mall type setup, where your primary domain is the portal to access various stores:

• mall.com
• shoes.mall.com
• shirts.mall.com

Regardless of the URL structure, the method for setting this up will pretty much be the same, and the result is what we’re really after, which is to have one codebase for all of your stores, and one backend to manage all of these stores from.

Shared Hosting Caveat

If you want each store to have it’s own SSL certificate and don’t want to share a single checkout, e.g. you don’t want visitors leaving domainA.com to checkout on domainB.com, then you will not be able to do this in a shared hosting environment.

The reason why you cannot do this is simple. In order for a website to have an SSL certificate, it requires a dedicated IP address.

There’s no way to allow an addon or parked domain in cPanel to have its own IP address. Instead, it shares the IP address of the primary domain.

You probably think you could sign up for two shared hosting accounts, so each one has its own dedicated IP address, but that won’t work either.

Since it’s shared hosting, there are security measures in place to prevent one user from reading the files of another user.

So for shared hosting clients, you’re limited to the following scenarios:

1. All of your stores do not have a secure checkout, which is fine if you’re using PayPal, Google Checkout, or a similar third-party service that handles the processing of card data on their website. For example, visitors to any of your stores are redirected to a third-party website for card processing.

2. All of your stores share a secure checkout point. For example, you own three domains: mall.com, shoes.com, and shirts.com You use mall.com as your primary domain and have an SSL certificate associated with it. The other two domains would be either addon or parked domains, and visitors to those sites would be redirected to mall.com to checkout.

3. All of your stores are setup as subdomains, and you’ve purchased a wildcard SSL certificate, which is roughly $1000/year and is for legally registered businesses.

If you do need an SSL certificate for all of your domains, you will need to be in a dedicated hosting environment, such as our Dedicated Container, which comes with 5 IP addresses. In this type of environment, all five domains will be able to access the same set of files.

Adding Another Store In Magento

The first thing we need to do is setup our second store in Magento.

We’re going to do a hypothetical here for the naming conventions, and assume we own shirts.com. Adjust the values accordingly for your own store.

1. Login to the Magento admin.

2. Go to the Catalog tab, and select Manage Categories.

3. Click on the Add Root Category button on the left.

4. On the right, for the Name, we’ll enter Shoes.com. Set the dropdown to Yes for both Is Active and Is Anchor.

5. Click the Save Category button.

6. Go to the System tab and select Manage Stores.

7. Click on the Create Website button.

8. For the Name, we’ll enter Shoes.com, and for the Code, we’ll enter shoes. We’ll use this value later, so don’t forget this!

9. Click the Save Website button.

10. Click on the Create Store button.

11. For the Website, select Shoes.com from the dropdown. For the Name, we’ll enter Main Store. For the Root Category, select the Shoes.com from the dropdown.

12. Click on the Save Store button.

13. Click on the Create Store View button.

14. For the Store, select Main Store from the dropdown, making sure it’s for the Shoes.com website. For the Name, we’ll enter English. For the Code, we’ll enter shoes_en. For the Status, select Enabled from the dropdown.

15. Click the Save Store View button.

16. Go to the System tab and select Configuration.

17. For the Current Configuration Scope (located on the top left), change the dropdown menu from Default Config to Shoes.com.

18. Select Web from the sidebar on the left under the General heading.

19. For both the Unsecure and Secure sections, uncheck the Use default box next to the Base URL item, and enter the URL for your store, e.g. http://www.shoes.com/. Don’t forget the trailing slash!

20. Click the Save Config button.

Now that we have our second store setup, you’ll need to choose one of the following methods for actually setting up the store on the server-side so visitors can access it.

If the URL structure you’ve chosen will have different domains for each store, the parked domain method is the fastest and easiest method.

Parked Domain Method

For this method, we’ll pretend we own shirts.com and shoes.com. The shirts.com domain is our primary domain, and Magento is already installed on it. Here’s how we would set this up for the shoes.com domain:

1. Login to cPanel for your domain and click on the Parked Domains icon.

2. In the input field, enter the domain name that you’ll be setting up as a second store, e.g. shoes.com.

3. Click on the Add Domain button.

4. Open up the index.php file for Magento and replace the last line of code:

   • Mage::run();

   …with the following code:

   • switch($_SERVER['HTTP_HOST']) {
   • case 'shoes.com':
   • case 'www.shoes.com':
   • Mage::run('shoes', 'website');
   • break;
   • default:
   • Mage::run();
   • break;
   • }

   If you have more than two stores, you will need to add additional cases to the above code block, e.g.:

   • switch($_SERVER['HTTP_HOST']) {
   • 

   • // Shoes.com
   • case 'shoes.com':
   • case 'www.shoes.com':
   • Mage::run('shoes', 'website');
   • break;
   • 

   • // Hats.com
   • case 'hats.com':
   • case 'www.hats.com':
   • Mage::run('hats', 'website');
   • break;
   • 

   • // Shirts.com (default store)
   • default:
   • Mage::run();
   • break;
   • }

Addon Domain Method

This is the same scenario as above, except it takes a little longer to setup. This method might be more useful to you if, for example, you wanted to have a blog on one domain, but not on the other. You couldn’t do that with a parked domain. Here’s how we would set this up for the shoes.com domain:

1. Login to cPanel for your domain, and click on the Addon Domains icon.

2. For the New Domain Name, we’ll enter shoes.com. cPanel will automatically fill in the next two fields, so remove public_html/ from the Document Root field, leaving us with just shoes.com.This step isn’t required, but for organizational purposes, it makes more sense.

3. Set a password for this domain and click on the Add Domain button.

4. Login to your site via SSH, and go to the directory that we previously set in the Document Root field above when adding our domain. In our case, we would do the following:

   • cd shoes.com/

5. Copy the index.php and .htaccess file from the directory where Magento is installed, which would be in our root web directory:

   • cp ../public_html/index.php ../public_html/.htaccess .

6. Open up the index.php file that we just copied over and replace the following line of code:

   • $mageFilename = 'app/Mage.php';

   …with the following:

   • $mageFilename = '../public_html/app/Mage.php';

7. With the index.php file still open, replace the following line of code:

   • Mage::run();

   …with the following:

   • Mage::run('shoes', 'website');

8. Lastly, we need to create symbolic links to point to a few directories:

   • ln -s ../public_html/app/ ./app
   • ln -s ../public_html/js/ ./js
   • ln -s ../public_html/media/ ./media
   • ln -s ../public_html/skin/ ./skin
   • ln -s ../public_html/var/ ./var

Subdomain Method

For this method, we’ll pretend we own mall.com, and it’s setup as a portal that links to the various shops within the mall. Magento will be installed on the mall.com domain, and all of the shops will be in subdomains, e.g.:

• shoes.mall.com
• shirts.mall.com

Here’s how we would set this up for the shoes subdomain:

1. Login to cPanel for your domain, and click on the Subdomains icon.

2. For the Subdomain, we’ll enter shoes. cPanel will automatically fill in the next field, so remove public_html/ from the Document Root field, leaving us with just shoes.This step isn’t required, but for organizational purposes, it makes more sense.

3. Click the Create button.

4. Login to your site via SSH, and go to the directory that we previously set in the Document Root field above when creating our subdomain. In our case, we would do the following:

   • cd shoes/

5. Copy the index.php and .htaccess file from the directory where Magento is installed, which would be in our root web directory:

   • cp ../public_html/index.php ../public_html/.htaccess .

6. Open up the index.php file that we just copied over and replace the following line of code:

   • $mageFilename = 'app/Mage.php';

   …with the following:

   • $mageFilename = '../public_html/app/Mage.php';

7. With the index.php file still open, replace the following line of code:

   • Mage::run();

   …with the following:

   • Mage::run('shoes', 'website');

8. Lastly, we need to create symbolic links to point to a few directories:

   • ln -s ../public_html/app/ ./app
   • ln -s ../public_html/js/ ./js
   • ln -s ../public_html/media/ ./media
   • ln -s ../public_html/skin/ ./skin
   • ln -s ../public_html/var/ ./var

Subdirectory Method

This is the same scenario as above, except all of the shops will be in subdirectories, e.g.:

• mall.com/shoes
• mall.com/shirts

Here’s how we would set this up for the shoes subdirectory:

1. Login to your site via SSH, and create a subdirectory where your second store will be:

   • cd public_html
   • mkdir shoes/
   • cd shoes/

2. Copy the index.php and .htaccess file from the directory where Magento is installed, which would be in our root web directory:

   • cp ../public_html/index.php ../public_html/.htaccess .

3. Open up the index.php file that we just copied over and replace the following line of code:

   • $mageFilename = 'app/Mage.php';

   …with the following:

   • $mageFilename = '../public_html/app/Mage.php';

4. With the index.php file still open, replace the following line of code:

   • Mage::run();

   …with the following:

   • Mage::run('shoes', 'website');

Managing Multiple Stores

It’s very important to remember that now that you have multiple stores to manage from one admin panel, that you make sure you’re changing the configuration for the appropriate store.

In the System → Configuration section, if you leave the dropdown menu for Current Configuration Scope set to Default Config, it will globally change the values for all of your stores, assuming you haven’t removed the checkmark next to Use default throughout the configuration sections.

You can change the configuration values globally, for each website, and for individual store views.

Secure Checkout For Each Store

For those of you in dedicated hosting environments, you can follow either the addon or parked domain method from above, and edit the httpd.conf file to give the addon or parked domain a dedicated IP address.

However, this is not advised. Your changes will most likely be overwritten with a control panel upgrade, Apache or PHP rebuild, or even simple maintenance.

Your best bet would be to setup each store as a separate account, which can be done in WHM if you have access to it, or in the case of our Dedicated Container, something we will be able to set up for you.

Once you have all of your domains setup as individual accounts, you would follow steps 5-8 for the addon domain method, except you’re going to use absolute paths instead of relative paths, e.g.:

• $mageFilename = '/home/username/public_html/app/Mage.php';

…and for symbolic links:

• ln -s /home/username/public_html/app/ ./app
• ln -s /home/username/public_html/js/ ./js
• ln -s /home/username/public_html/media/ ./media
• ln -s /home/username/public_html/skin/ ./skin
• ln -s /home/username/public_html/var/ ./var

Lastly, in order for the above to work, you will need suEXEC disabled. This won’t be a problem in a dedicated hosting environment, since you don’t have to worry about other people being able to access your files.

This is just one of the many advantages of running your online business in a more secure and flexible hosting environment like this. If you’re on our Dedicated Container, this is something we’ll have to disable for you.

Once you’ve done the above, all of your stores will have their own secure checkout and IP address, but will still share the same codebase and backend for management purposes.