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Don’t break your live website. Create a staging site for WordPress instead.
Mistakes happen. Sometimes plugins or themes just don’t work. You can try something out with a staging site without ruining your live site. Keep reading to learn what a staging site is, when to use one, and how to create a staging site with WordPress.
If you remember bubbling in your answers on standardized tests in school, then you know the importance of scratch paper. You could work out a solution on scratch paper before committing to an answer. A staging environment is like a scratch paper for your website.
A staging site is a copy of your website that you can use to test out changes without changing the live public-facing version of your site. Staging environments aren’t public, so only the people working on the site can see and use them.
A staging site isn’t necessary if you just need to add a missing comma to a blog post. But a staging site can be a big help for more in-depth changes. Let’s look at some of the most common reasons people create a staging environment for their WordPress site.
Want to change the layout of your site or perhaps switch themes? Whatever design changes you’re thinking about, it’s better to make them on a staging site instead of your live site. Theme and design changes are a lot like shopping for clothes. The dressing room mirror often tells a different story no matter how great something looks on the rack. Think of your staging site as your website’s dressing room where you can test designs privately.
When editing your site’s code or modifying essential functions, make the changes on a staging site first. You can then conduct quality assurance checks to ensure the changes work the way you want and don’t break anything.
If you’re adding a new feature or plugin, a staging site lets you try them out first. You can also use the staging site to fine-tune the settings and options for any new plugins and conduct quality control testing.
If you’re doing a complete site redesign or making significant content changes, a staging environment provides a place for you to work until the changes are ready. Instead of pulling an all-nighter trying to make all the changes at once, you can build out the new design. Then when it’s time to go live, you just publish the staging site over the live site.
One of the best uses of a staging site for WordPress is to test out compatibility. You can use this test before upgrading to the next major release of WordPress or changing your PHP version.
For Pressable customers, we make it easy. When a new version of WordPress is coming out, we provide the option to change your staging environment to a beta version of the upcoming release. We also let you change the PHP version. You can make sure the site can handle the upgrades before switching.
As with most things, there are some downsides to using a staging environment. First of all, working on a staging environment takes time. Since a staging environment is itself separate from the live site, you sometimes end up with an interesting coincidence. If you have a team of people who managed your website and one person publishes two blog articles to the live site, these articles to not exist in the staging environment. Instead, it remains frozen in time while the live site changes and evolves. Now, instead of updating just one site, you have two sites to update and maintain (that is, unless your host has a nifty cloning feature).
Another time drain is the fact that you still have to push updates to a live site after making them in a staging environment. After working out the kinks in your staging environment, you have to push these changes to the live site. Depending on how major the changes are, they could take a while to update. It’s important to ensure clients have a reasonable expectation of delivery time when they ‘need changes now.’
Also, unless your host offers WordPress staging environments as part of your plan (Pressable does), you’ll have to pay for an environment to test changes in. This cost can really add up depending on how many sites you want to have updating at once, so searching for a host that offers a dedicated staging environment as part of your hosting plan is essential.
Options for creating a staging site include using your hosting provider, plug-ins, developer tools, or manually creating one.
Manually creating a staging site involves downloading a full copy of your site, so you can install it on a different WordPress instance. This manual approach is incredibly time-consuming and offers few benefits.
Plugins and advanced developer tools are easier but probably unnecessary for most websites. If you need multiple development branches and the ability to merge code from different developers, you might want to explore those release management tools.
For most websites, it will be easiest to use your host for staging sites if you have a quality managed WordPress hosting service. Here’s how easy it is to create a staging site with Pressable:
1. Log in to your Pressable dashboard and click on the site you want to use to create a staging environment.
2. From the site’s settings panel, click the Actions drop-down on the right side of the screen. Select the option to clone the site.
3. In the pop-up window, give the staging site a name and toggle on the option to clone as a staging site. When this option is selected, the site won’t count against the site count for your Pressable plan. You can create as many staging sites as you need.
Once you’ve made the changes to your site and are ready to publish them, you’ll replace the live site with the staging one. On Pressable, this works differently than a development tool where you’d push changes from a staging site into production. Check out this guide on how to push staging site to production for step-by-step instructions on converting a staging site into a live site.
Pressable makes managing your WordPress website easy. You can create a staging site from our dashboard. Checking compatibility with different PHP or WordPress core versions is a couple of clicks away. Just clone a site and use the drop-down to change the versions. If you get stuck, don’t worry. Our team of WordPress experts is on hand 24/7 to help you troubleshoot any issues. Pick a WordPress hosting plan and get started today.
Zach brings a wealth of knowledge to Pressable with more than 15 years of experience in the WordPress world. His journey in WordPress began with creating and maintaining client websites, fostering a deep understanding of the intricacies and challenges of WordPress. Later, his knack for problem-solving and commitment to service led him to pursue a role at Automattic, where he excelled in providing customer support for WooCommerce. His expertise extends beyond technical proficiency to encompass a deep understanding of the WordPress community and its needs. Outside of work, Zach enjoys spending time with his family, playing and watching sports, and working on projects around the house.
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