Copying the website in the Plesk panel

Introduction

• The Plesk panel allows copying website files to another domain on the same hosting package (cloning) or via FTP to an external server.
• Copying the website files is part of the cloning process, however, to complete the cloning, you will also need to copy the databases used by the site. If you do not have another site to use as a staging environment, you can add a domain or a subdomain for this purpose.

Requirements

• For this, you will need a Plesk account and two websites between which the files will be copied if you want cloning.
• The FTP login details of the account to which you want to copy the site in case you want to do it externally.

Steps

• After logging in to the panel Plesk, we will go to Websites & Domains, then we will choose the site we want to copy, and in that domain's menu, we will click on Website Copying.

• In the next window, we have the two copy options, Website in Plesk or FTP Storage.

• If we choose Website in Plesk, we will create a clone of the site in another domain on the same hosting package as follows:
• Site Name - we will choose the domain to which we want to move the files (it is advisable to be careful when doing this and recommended to create a subdomain or an addon domain for this move because the service will overwrite the root directory of the destination site if one exists, thus we will avoid this or we can rename the default directory "/httpdocs" before starting the copy)
• Here we can choose what to do with the respective files, whether to copy them and thus keep them on the source site or to move them to the destination site.

• If we choose FTP Storage, we will make a copy of the respective site to an external source using the FTP service. More details about the FTP connection can be found here
• Server host name - the name of the site to which you want to transfer the files or the site's IP
• Port - generally, port 21 will be used
• Directory - here we will enter the name of the directory where we want to copy the files (unlike the other copy method, here we can choose the directory where the files will be copied and it will be in the form /public_html/directory.name)
• Username - enter the username of the FTP account to which we want to transfer the files
• Password - we enter the password for the FTP account recipient

• FTP connection method
• Active mode - In active mode, Plesk sends the IP address and port number to which it will wait for connections from an external server, and the server initiates the TCP connection. This mode is recommended if the server managed by Plesk is not protected by a firewall.
• Passive mode - The passive mode can be used when the server managed through Plesk is behind a firewall and cannot receive TCP connections from the outside. (this is the recommended connection mode)