Most website outages caused by the site owner follow the same story: an update or change made directly on the live site, on a busy day, with no easy way back. A staging site prevents that.
What a staging site is
A staging site is a private copy of your website, usually on a subdomain such as staging.yourbusiness.com. You make and test changes there, then copy them to the live site when they work.
When to use it
- Major updates to WordPress, themes or plugins.
- Redesigns and new page templates.
- New features such as payment gateways or booking systems.
- Changing PHP versions.
Good practice
- Refresh staging from live before you start, so you test against current content.
- Keep it private. Protect it with a password and block search engines, so it never appears in results or competes with your real site.
- Stop outgoing email and payments on staging, so test orders do not email real customers or charge cards.
- Write down what you change, so applying it to live is predictable.
- Back up live before copying changes over.
Be careful with stores
On an online store, new orders keep arriving on the live site while you work on staging. Copying the whole staging database back would erase them. Apply changes to live by hand, or copy only files and settings.
Getting a staging site
Web hosting plans at IDX include staging tools, and WordPress sites can be cloned from the control panel. For larger projects, our managed services team can set up a proper development, staging and live workflow for you.
IDX on digital infrastructure
Back to blog →