Preview your site on a Linux Server with Plesk

Let's make an example per say that your server IP address is 1.2.3.4 and your domain is mydomain.com. You are working on the site and want to test the site on your server at Hosting.com however you are not ready to update DNS just yet.

With Plesk you have three primary means of previewing your site.

Option #1

You can use the "Site Preview" function within Plesk. While this is the simplest solution it is not really viable for sending a preview to your clients.

1. Log into Plesk
2. Select Domains
3. Choose your Domain
4. Select Site Preview

   

Option #2

You can set the site you are creating inside of Plesk as the primary site for the specified IP address.

1. Log into Plesk
2. Select Server
3. Select IP Addresses
4. Click the number under the Hosting column for the IP address assigned to your new site
5. Place check in domain for which you wish to be the primary for this IP address.
6. Click "Set As Default"

   

Now you'll be able to access your site using the server IP such as http://1.2.3.4

Option #3

You can create a sub-domain record to preview the site. You can create a DNS record of test as an A record pointing to the IP address of your server at Hosting.com therefore test.mydomain.com resolves to your server solution.

If you host your DNS with Hosting.com you can simply use our DNS Management utility via the Total Customer Control Panel. The following support article will walk you through this interface.

http://www.hosting.com/support/cpanel/dns/advanced_manager/

Then you'll need to configure your server to listen for requests for test.mydomain.com.

1. Log into Plesk
2. Select Domains
3. Choose your Domain
4. Select Domain Administrator
5. Update Domain Name to test.mydomain.com
   • Be sure to remove the Check Box for WWW

   

This will allow the http://test.mydomain.com to resolve to this site inside of Plesk.