I recently switched to a Plesk 9 based VPS and having screwed an .htaccess file, needed to restore a backup. However, having gone the normal restore route, I was greeted by, “Virtual host of DOMAINNAME.com Cannot restore Virtual host: Virtual host ” already exists in Parallels Plesk Panel”.

I was a little confused – if I deleted that domain (so presumably the virtual host no longer existed), wouldn’t I lose the associated backup.xml file associated with it – making it impossible to restore?

How should I go about restoring the data? Turns out this is quite a cryptic message, Google searches revealed people in similar confused states. Which didn’t help when panicking that a backup file might be as much use as a chocolate fireguard…

Thankfully, the support team at my hosts NuBlue pointed me in the right direction. It’s merely a warning about conflict resolution and you can overcome the problem this way…

1. Click the XML link for the file you want to restore. Choose the relevant restore options:

2. Click next and you’ll be greeted by ‘Virtual host ” already exists in Parallels Plesk Panel’ – ignore and click Next and then choose the top three options:

3. Click next and go put the kettle on! Job done. Once complete your restore should be complete.

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