Create a test website

A test website is a site on a test node. Its whole domain comes from the preview address template, so it cannot take a real customer’s domain. The form asks for a subdomain and fills in the rest.

Before you start

• Your account has the Create hostings permission.
• A preview address template is set. See Preview a website before its DNS moves. Issue the node’s preview certificate there too.
• At least one node is marked as a test server. An Owner opens the server’s row on Nodes and clicks Mark as test. The master can be a test server too. See Choose where new sites go.

Until both are in place, Add a website shows no Test website card. Opening /hostings/new?test=1 on the panel lists what is missing under Before the first test website.

Steps

1. Open Hostings in the sidebar, click Add a website, then the Test website card.
2. In Subdomain, type a name such as blog: lowercase letters, digits and dashes, up to 32 characters, with no dash at the start or end. The full address appears around the field.
3. Under Server, pick a test server if there is more than one.
4. Under What runs on it, choose what the site is. For a WordPress site, the fields under the WordPress group are optional: Admin email, Site title, Admin username, Admin password and Language. A blank password is generated. Plugins & theme from the library installs what you tick from the asset library.
5. Under Search engines, keep Hidden (the default) or choose Visible. Hidden sends X-Robots-Tag: noindex on every response, and WordPress also gets “Discourage search engines”. Change it later under the site’s Vhost options.
6. Click Create test website.

The site is created like any other, and you land on its page with its credentials shown once. See Create a website.

Check that it worked

The site appears under Hostings with state active, on the test server, and its address loads with a trusted certificate. Delete it when you are done, as described in Suspend, resume or delete a website.

If it fails

• “Type the subdomain name for the test site.”: fill in Subdomain.
• “That server no longer takes test sites. Pick another one, or mark it as a test server on the Nodes page.”: the node was unmarked. Pick another server or mark it again.
• The site loads with a certificate warning: the node’s preview certificate is not issued. Check Settings, HTTPS & previews, Preview certificates.