Please note: This article relates specifically to customers on Startup, Growth, and Scale plans.
When you convert to Startup, Growth, or Scale plans, your existing “installs” are converted into “single-environment sites.” In this article we explain how to convert a single-environment site into an environment within a site. In this way you can reduce your overall site count, allowing for more total sites and environments on your plan. Watch our quick video on converting single-environment sites below, or read on to learn more.
Single-Environment Sites vs Dev-Stage-Prod Sites
When converting to new shared plans, your existing installs will be found under the “Sites” tab in the User Portal, as “single-environment sites” that look like this:
Each of these single-environment sites count against your total site count allowed on your plan. However, by reorganizing your single-environment sites into Development, Staging, or Production environments within a site, you can allow for more total sites and environments. A site with all three environments looks like this:
In addition to the ability to add more total environments and new sites, reorganizing these environments allows you to Copy to/from other environments within your site. This makes your development workflow through development, staging, and finally copying to production much easier and intuitive.
How to Convert Single-Environment Sites to Dev-Stage-Prod Sites
There are several different ways you can convert single-environment sites to a site with multiple environments. In this section we will cover each option.
Option 1: Convert to site environment
The first method is to convert your single-environment site to a site environment in the “…” menu on the Sites page.
Navigate to your single-environment site, marked by a gray bar on the left side of the site, and click “…” on the right side.
Click Convert to site environment in the list, and choose a name for your new site, as well as which type of environment you would like it to be (development, staging, or production).
*Please note: If your single-environment site has a custom domain mapped, you will only be able to move it to a Production environment
Click Convert site to finalize the change.
Your site will be created with your single-environment site now living as an environment within a dev-stage-prod site.
Option 2: Move existing
To convert to your current single-environment site to an environment within an existing site, select the Add site button from your sites page. Name your site, and from here you will be taken to a page that asks you to create a brand new environment, create a new environment as a copy of another one, or to Move existing
Select Move existing to move your existing single-environment site into the new dev-stage-prod site you have created. You can do this for production, staging, or development within the site by clicking any of the tabs in the left-hand navigation.
Please note: This method should be used for situations where you want to move a single-environment to a dev-stage-prod site that already exists.
Option 3: Move to existing site environment
The last option is to move an existing single-environment site into an existing site as one of its development, staging, or production environments. To do this, click “…” from the single-environment site in your Sites page and select Move to existing site environment.
Choose the existing site you would like to move it to, and which available environment you would like this single-environment site to replace.
Select Move site to confirm the change. Remember, single-environment sites with custom domains may only be moved to Production environments.
Select Confirm in the modal to acknowledge the change. Your single-environment site will now live under this site as your development, staging, or production environment.