Absolutely! WPhost offers Staging on all plans. The first month is always free and then if required, it’s just $10/month + GST.

You can have Staging switched off and then reorder the Staging Site Addon from inside your Client Area to take advantage of the free first month as often as required.

Because of the complex nature and size requirements, staging is not available to sites that employ WordPress Multisite.

Watch our video guide as we show you how to order Product Addons:

The main consideration whether to use Staging boils down to one question: is the live site being edited or updated while the Staging site is in development, or will it be waiting unchanged until you’re ready to push your Staging changes to the live site?

The answer to that question will determine whether staging is suited for your situation, because when you push Staging changes to the live site, you’ll have the option of whether to overwrite the live database with the Staging database, or to leave the live database as-is and instead only push file changes from Staging.

Ideal uses for Staging:

• Duplicating the live site to make changes and updates
• Making changes and updates to theme files
• Making changes and updates to CSS and/or JavaScript Files
• Installing and removing plugins
• Adding and removing themes
• Testing updates to themes or plugins
• Activating a new theme
• Adding new media files, images, etc.
• Adding or editing posts, pages, settings, products and other content stored in the site’s database as long as the live site’s content and database are NOT being updated or edited in the meantime.

NOT recommended for Staging:

• Importing an external site or database—anything that is not a duplicate of the live site
• Adding or editing posts, pages, settings, products and other content stored in the database in situations where the live site IS changing while Staging is in development (such as an eCommerce store, a frequently updated blog, or a forum)
• Making changes to eCommerce data like products, orders, users, etc. while the live site’s store is still active
• Making database content changes to any site where site users can create content
• Keeping a backup of the live site. (Our automated backups do not include Staging)
• Leaving the Staging site active but not pushing it live for extremely long periods of time (as this increases the likelihood of database conflicts)
• Situations where the Staging database would need to be merged with the live site’s database, keeping changes to both, or in which only a partial database merge is desired

Staging is designed to create a duplicate of the live site, then allow changes to be pushed back to the live site later. Staging can overwrite the live database or leave it alone and only push files, but it can’t merge changes to both the Staging and the live site’s database. So if you’re changing both at the same time, you risk losing some data.

To request a staging copy of your production site, simply order the Staging Site Addon from inside your Client Area.

The first month is always free and then if required, it’s just $10/month + GST.  You can have Staging switched off and then reorder the Staging Site Addon from inside your Client Area to take advantage of the free first month as often as required.

Because of the complex nature and size requirements, staging is not available to sites that employ WordPress Multisite.

When you’re ready to move staging changes to your live site, just open a support ticket. Once we’ve pushed your changes to the Live site and are ready to switch off the Staging site, be sure to let us know so we can disable Staging and remove the Addon from your Client Area.

Watch our video guide as we show you how to order Product Addons:

When you connect via SFTP, you’ll see a new folder with the same name as your original site, only appended with “_staging”.

You’ll want to prevent Google from crawling your Staging site if it is not password protected. This may result in SEO penalties and unwanted visitor activity, so be sure to disable staging as soon as possible.

We recommend putting your staging site into “maintenance mode.”

Leaving your Staging site active but not pushing it live for extremely long periods of time will also increase the likelihood of database conflicts.

WPhost does not provide backups for staging sites. If you make changes on staging that you don’t want to lose, it’s best to save a backup of those locally using a backup plugin.

If you need to start over, or just need to update your Staging site’s content to reflect recent changes on the live production site, don’t worry – we can do that for you!

To request we reset your staging site, simply open a support ticket.

WARNING

Resetting staging will overwrite ALL content on the staging site. If you have changes on staging that you don’t want to lose, it’s best to save a backup of those locally using a backup plugin as we do not provide backups of staging sites.

When Staging changes are pushed to your live site, you have the option to overwrite the live database with the Staging database, or to leave the live database as-is and instead only push file changes from Staging.

When you open a support ticket requesting we move staging changes to your live site, it’s extremely important you fully understand the consequences of both options available to you. Here’s an outline of what will happen in both cases:

IF YOU DO NOT COPY STAGING DATABASE TO PRODUCTION

The live production site’s plugins and themes will be overwritten with the staging site’s plugins and themes; new and updated uploads on the staging site will be merged with the live production site’s uploads; plus code files (like CSS, JavaScript, etc.), images, media files like audio and video, PDFs, and any other user-uploaded content will be pushed to the live production site.

IF YOU COPY STAGING DATABASE TO PRODUCTION

All of the above still happens, plus the staging database will overwrite the live production site’s database. The database includes: all posts, pages, post and page content and revisions, navigation menus, widgets, WordPress users, comments, configuration options, store data such as products and orders, and WordPress options.

WARNING

• It is highly inadvisable to use staging to make any database changes at all on eCommerce sites, membership sites, or in any other situation where users may be adding or editing live site content while staging changes are being made. In these cases, we recommend that staging be used only for changes and updates to files, like plugins, themes, and uploads.

When we detect that a staging site has not been accessed for several days, we automatically dial down the staging site’s resources. Don’t worry, your staging site is still available for use, we just need to wake it up!

When traffic to staging is detected again, we automatically dial the resources back up, which can take a few moments.