Updating your live website can be risky. A staging site plays a critical role in your site maintenance strategy by providing a testing ground for updates and customizations before they are deployed on your live site.
What is a Staging Site?
A staging site is an exact copy of your website hosted in non-public area. Having a staging site gives us the ability to test updates or develop custom features without any disruptions to your live site. Once those updates have been tested and approved, they can be safely deployed to your live site.
Why Do I Need a Staging Site?
Testing Updates
Your website represents your business, so any downtime or issues reflect poorly on you. Updates, especially major ones, can sometimes cause problems. We’ve seen cases where seemingly minor updates have taken down an entire site. This scenario is a perfect example of why testing updates on a staging site is critical.
Testing New Features
Before adding new plugins or custom features, it’s important to see them in action. A staging site allows you to do this without impacting your live site.
Changing Your Theme
Changing the theme of your website can take a bit of time and effort. A staging site lets you make design changes and tweaks without affecting the live website. Once the new theme is ready, it can be deployed to your live site with minimal downtime.
How Do I Get a Staging Site?
Many hosting providers offer staging functionality as part of their services. Working with a hosting provider that offers a staging solution is your best option. If you absolutely love your current hosting provider but they don’t offer staging features, there are third-party staging solutions available (for a fee of course). Third-party solutions are OK, but they cannot exactly replicate your live site hosting environment making testing somewhat unreliable.
Contact us today and let’s make sure you have a proper staging site set up for your website.