Book a demo
Book a demo
Login

How to Go Live From Demo Site With Custom Domain?

Updated October 27, 2026 · 4 min read

Summarize with:
Share:

With xCloud, you can easily create a demo site in a few clicks and test everything before going live. A demo site serves as a test website where you can migrate sites, run experiments, use all necessary plugins and themes, and also go Live with a custom domain. But ever wondered how you can go live from a demo site with custom domain using xCloud?

Follow the steps below to go live from the demo site with a custom domain on xCloud

First, click on the ‘Domain’ → ‘Go Live’ option from the dashboard. Then go to the ‘Domain Setup’ section. Enter your ‘Domain name’ in the field.

Then go to the ‘DNS Setup’ section from the dashboard and add the records to your domain provider and verify the DNS. 

The DNS Setup card on the Go Live tab, showing the A record to add and the ‘Verify My DNS’ button

If you are using Cloudflare for DNS management, you can follow this guide for DNS Management with Cloudflare.

After that, click on the ‘Save’ button to complete the process. From the xCloud dashboard, you can easily go live from the demo site with a single click. 

Want to learn about how to set up your DNS records? 

Read the documentation 

When the domain is already used by another site

If you rebuilt a site on a demo or staging site and want it to take over the domain your current live site uses, Go Live on the new site fails while the old site still holds that domain. On one server, a domain can belong to only one site, as its primary domain or as an additional domain. When you try, Go Live stops and shows: “This domain is already in use by another site on this server.” (or “The domain … is already in use by the site … on this server.”).

Disabling the old site does not free the domain, and staging Push does not help either: it only copies files and database tables into the production site the staging site is linked to, and never moves a domain. Free the domain on the old site first, then run Go Live on the new one.

The domain is not served by either site between Step 2 and Step 3, so do these steps back to back, at a quiet time for your visitors.

Step 1: Back up the old site

Take a fresh backup of the old site so you can restore it if something goes wrong. Open the old site and go to ‘Site Backup’ → ‘Previous Backups’ (the menu is called ‘Backup’ on non-WordPress sites), then click ‘Backup Now’. If a dialog opens, choose the backup type and click Backup. The button shows a loading state while the backup runs. When the backup has finished, the button is available again and the new backup is listed in the table with its time. See Site backups in xCloud for the options.

Site backups are not available on the free plan. On the free plan, make your own copy instead: download the site files over SFTP and export the database with Adminer.

Step 2: Remove the domain from the old site

Choose one of these on the old site:

  • Keep the old site under another name: go to ‘Domain’ → ‘Domain’, click ‘Change’ under ‘Primary Domain’, enter a different domain (for example old.example.com, with its DNS record already pointing to the server) and click ‘Save’. If the domain you need is listed under ‘Additional Domains’, remove it there too.
  • Remove the old site: go to ‘Site Settings’ (called ‘Settings’ on non-WordPress sites) and click ‘Delete Site’. Only do this after the backup in Step 1 has finished. If you don’t see ‘Delete Site’, use the ‘Change’ option instead.

Warning: If the new site is a staging site of the old site, do not delete the old site. Deleting a production site also removes every staging site attached to it (see How to create a staging environment), so you would delete the site you want to put live. Use the ‘Change’ option under ‘Primary Domain’ instead, or first clone the staging site into a standalone site and run Go Live on the clone.

If the old site is disabled, enable it first. A disabled site cannot save a domain change.

On the old site, the ‘Primary Domain’ field and the ‘Change’ button in Domain → Domain

Step 3: Run Go Live on the new site

Open the new site, go to ‘Domain’ → ‘Go Live’ and click the ‘Go Live’ tab. Enter the domain in ‘Domain Name’, verify the DNS and click ‘Save’, as described at the top of this guide. The new site must be enabled; Go Live does not open on a disabled site.

The ‘Go Live’ tab in the Demo Site Management card of the new site

When Go Live finishes, open the domain in a browser and check that it shows the new site. If the domain still shows the old content, purge the page cache and any CDN cache.

If the new site is on a different server

The one-domain-per-site rule applies within one server, so xCloud does not block Go Live on a site on another server. Which site visitors reach depends on where the domain’s DNS points. Point the DNS at the new server, run Go Live there, then remove the domain from the old site, or delete the old site, so it no longer uses that domain.

What Go Live already does for you

For WordPress sites, Go Live already runs a database search-and-replace to swap the demo domain for the live one. You don’t need to do this yourself in the normal case. The Go Live dialog lets you choose the Search & Replace Mode and Table Mode; the defaults cover the standard WordPress tables.

Why old URLs can remain after Go Live

If images or links still point at the old demo domain afterward, it’s usually one of these:

  • The domain was changed a different way (for example, only at DNS) instead of through the Go Live wizard’s search-and-replace.
  • Some URLs aren’t plain database values: they’re hard-coded in theme or plugin code, or stored in page-builder data that the standard search-and-replace doesn’t reach.
  • The page cache or a CDN cache is still serving the old, pre-Go-Live version of a page.

Fixing leftover old-domain URLs

  1. Purge caches first. Clear the site’s page cache and any CDN cache (Cloudflare or similar). A stale cache is the simplest explanation and the quickest to rule out.
  2. Run WP-CLI search-replace if URLs are still wrong. Take a backup first, then run: 
    wp search-replace 'old-domain.com' 'new-domain.com' --all-tables --precise
    Use WP-CLI rather than raw SQL. It safely handles WordPress’s serialized PHP data, which a plain SQL replace can corrupt. Check links and media on the site afterward.
  3. Check home and siteurl. If either still points at the old domain, that’s very likely the direct cause and worth confirming before you look further.

Multisite

Multisite networks need extra care beyond the single-site steps above: the network’s domain configuration and any per-site URL caching can each hold onto the old domain independently. If old URLs persist on a multisite install after the steps above, contact support rather than editing multisite configuration blind.

Frequently asked questions

Can two sites on the same server use the same domain?

No. On one server, a domain can be the primary or additional domain of only one site. Go Live on the second site stops and shows: “This domain is already in use by another site on this server.” (or “The domain … is already in use by the site … on this server.”). Remove the domain from the other site or delete that site first.

Does disabling the old site free its domain?

No. A disabled site keeps its domain, so Go Live on the new site is still blocked. A disabled site also cannot save a domain change, so enable it first if you want to change its domain instead of deleting it.

Can I use staging Push to move my domain to the new site?

No. Push to Production only copies files and database tables from a staging site into the production site it is linked to. It never moves a domain from one site to another.

If you run into any issues while going live, feel free to reach out to our support team.