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Unable to change document root for a website in Plesk: It is impossible to change document root because there are web applications installed on this website

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Alexey Lapshin
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kb: technical ABT: Group A

Applicable to:

  • Plesk for Linux

Symptoms

No option to change document root for a website:

PLESK_INFO: It is impossible to change document root because there are web applications installed on this website.

Cause

This is an expected behavior as an application installed is using httpdocs directory to store it's own files.

So if the document root for a website will be modified, the application will stop working. Plesk prevent such issues by restricting removing or changing default folder for a domain.

Resolution

In order to change the document root, the application should be uninstalled.

Warning: as it may cause data loss, perform this on your own risk:

  1. Log into Plesk.

  2. Open Subscriptions > example.com > Applications tab:

  3. Select the application and remove it, e.g. Joomla:
    2018_02_14_12_04_02_Plesk_Onyx_17.5.3.png

Comments

2 comments

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    Ian Tresman (Edited )

    This is inflexible in the follow setup:

    • www.mydomain.com, Document root: /mydomain.com
    • dev.mydomain.com, Document root: /mydomain.com

    I would make the following comments:

    1. If the dev.mydomain.com document root is changed, the application will not stop working, because it runs from www.mydomain.com. Wordpress was originally installed to the dev staging directory.
    2. I also can't remove the app, because it is in use by the live www.mydomain.com
    3. I want to change the dev.mydomain.com document root, so that I can remove the dev subdomain. (Plesk tells me it will remove all related files). If I change the document root, then I can safely remove it.

    In my opinion, there should be an option to override the restriction, or, I should be able to "unlink" the app from the directory so I can change the directory.

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  • Avatar
    Ivan Postnikov

    Hello Ian Tresman

    Thank you for the feedback and for sharing your user experience.

    Feel free to create a feature suggestion here.

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