Plesk Control panel includes feature called WordPress Toolkit, which allows you to easily deploy, update, and manage WordPress installations. WordPress Toolkit also provides an easy staging feature which you can use for updating WordPress on the development version and then import the changes to the production page. (If you plan to install other applications than WordPress, please check our application archive).
WordPress Toolkit is located in the left main menu in Plesk. If you have multiple web hosting subscriptions on the same account, you may want to to select first your subscription from the topright dropdown. Then click 'WordPress'.
Installing a new WordPress application
When 'Install WordPress' dialog opens, specify the installation path and any additional settings you prefer. If you have multiple web hosting subscriptions in your account, you can choose the target domain for this installation from the dropdown menu. In some cases the installer may offer 'wordpress' as the default installation path, but you may want to clear this field - otherwise WordPress will be installed at subdirectory (i.e. www.yourdomain.tld/wordpress). Naturally, make sure that you don't have any existing websites in your domain yet, which will be overwritten.
In this dialog you can also specify a name and possible add-on package for your WordPress installation under plugin/theme set. These can be also edited and installed later, so you can leave the fields at their defaults. You can also specify WordPress administrator username and password, but this is unnecessary as you will be able to log into WordPress directly from the Plesk Control Panel. (The password can be changed later via the WordPress Toolkit, see instructions below).
You can also edit the database settings, but often there is no need for this either, as WordPress Toolkit automatically creates necessary database credentials for you. But automatic updates is something you should decide - click 'Automatic Update Settings' to see selections as follows:
In this dialog, you can choose how WordPress Updates are automated. By default, the WordPress Toolkit automatically takes care of WordPress core updates, but not plugins or themes upgrades.
If you don't want to do any WordPress updates yourself in the future, you should consider autmating all updates for security reasons. In this case, select "Yes, all (minior and major updates" and turn on the Plugins and Themes buttons below. Then WordPress Toolkit automatically updates all WordPress core, plugins, and themes as they appear. However, there is a small risk in this that some incompatibility issue may occure between updated core, plugins and themes and your website may - at worst - go down without warning. Our system notifies you by the email whenever it has made updates to the page.
If you don't want to take this risk, turn on only minior security updates (or choose 'No' to turn off all WordPress core updates). Then you must manually perform the updates yourself trough the WordPress Toolkit on regular basis. You will also in this case receive an email notification when new updates become available for you to upgrade. But with manual upgrades you can back up the WordPress site before applying any updates - and if something goes wrong revert the site from your backups.
NOTE! If you choose not to use the automatic updates, then you must regularly update your WordPress installation. If you neglect your WordPress security updates, this will soon lead to to security issues, hacking and even site closure due to vulnerabilities in outdated WordPress or its add-ons. Our system notifies you via email whenever updates are available, but ultimately the resposibility for updating is on the customer.
If you don't want to worry about the updates, also consider our SmartWP web hosting, which outsources all the WordPress core, plugins and themes updates to us.
Finally, click "Install" and WordPress will be installed to the path of your choise, typically within seconds:
After WordPress core installation is complete, you will be promted to install a few plugins and themes. If you know at this point what themes or plugins you will need, you can easily add them to your installation by selecting "Install plugins". Alternatively, you can bypass this by selecting "No, thanks" and skip this step:
Managing your WordPress with WordPress Toolkit
After installing (or skipping) the plugins and themes, installer finishes and you will be forwarded to WordPress Toolkit view as follows:
On this page, you can now manage all the features of all your WordPress installations on your Plesk account:
- By pressing "Log in" you can login to your WordPress admin interface. If you need to change a forgotten WordPress admin username or password, you can reset this by clickin "Setup". (This must be done for example after importing WordPress content with All-in-One WP Migration plugin to allow Log in button to work).
- You can edit your WordPress site name ('Praise the Sun' in this example) by clicking pen icon. The name change made in this view is also applied inside WordPress. Feel free to add labels too on your WordPress to make different installations easier to identify from each other.
- Under the Dashboard tab you can find File manager, as well as wizards such as 'Copy Data' to copy your site content from one installation to another, 'Clone' to copy a full WordPress installation to another domain, subdomain or subfolder. (Check also staging article which covers these features.) The 'Backup / Restore' feature allows to quickly back up and restore this WordPress (always recommended before updating).
- Use the buttons below to toggle on or off:
- Search engine indexing, which disables or enables search engines listing your site. This is especially useful if the site is still under development - or this is a staging site (which should never be indexed in search engines).
- Debugging which sets your WordPress to development mode for troubleshooting technical issues with your installation
- Password Protection hides your WordPress from public, for example during the construction phase or upgrades of the site (an option for maintenance mode), or if you just want your site to be non-public for good
- Take over wp-cron.php allows you to replace your internal WordPress wp-cron.php with better performing cron job
- Smart Update is available in our SmartWP hosting plans (and set on default on those plans). When this is on, all WordPress core, plugins and themes upgrades are performed with our worry-free Smart Updates technology.
- Maintenance Mode prevents accessing your WordPress site from the public showing separate maintenance page, which content you can freely set using settings button.
- For more detailed explanations of each of these features, hover your mouse cursor over the question mark icon at each point
- You can also install, enable or disable Plugins or Themes from the corresponding tabs. Managing them trough this interface is faster than from WordPress' own admin interface, and you can also easily resolve issues with plugins compatibility in case WordPress admin is unreachable.
- Under Security you can 'Fix security / Check security' to harden your WordPress installation. We recommend this feature only for advanced WordPress users.
- Under 'Check Updates' you can manually apply WordPress updates. By clicking 'Autoupdate settings' you can control which of these updates are performed automatically and which you want to do manually. (If your plan is SmartWP, do not make any changes to these settings as they're preset correctly by us).
- Buttons at the top under Installations tab allows you to also carry out a range of actions as follows: 'Scan' button searches for any manually imported WordPress installations from your web server disk space and links them to this WordPress Toolkit for easier maintenance. If you want to unlink them, select the installation and click 'Detach'. This does not remove anything but simply detaches your installation to be managed manually. If you want to remove your WordPress installation, select your installation and click 'Remove'. (WordPress installations should be always removed this way - never deleting files or databases directly).
NOTE! Never uninstall applications by removing their files or databases manually, as this results corrupted installation in WordPress Toolkit. If you do so by accident, then you need to detach the corrupted installation from WordPress Toolkit to solve this issue
If you have multiple WordPress installations in your Plesk account, you can manage them all in this centralized WordPress Toolkit location.
