How to Build a Staging Site to Test Your Website Before Going Live

Want to redesign your website or add new features? Itching to install the latest version of your CMS or try out a cutting-edge widget?

If you‘re not testing these changes on a staging site first, you‘re playing a dangerous game, my friend. 😬

Imagine this: You spend hours or even days working on a new page layout, updating all your plugins, or setting up an ecommerce tool. You‘re excited to take it live and show the world. But when you do, you discover broken links, missing images, formatting issues, and even dreaded white screens of death. Suddenly your phone is blowing up with alerts about website issues. Not good.

It happens to the best of us. In fact, research shows that 98% of websites experience at least one major outage per year. And 75% of users will leave a site that takes longer than 4 seconds to load. Yikes.

The good news? You can avoid most of those issues with a trusty staging site.

What Is a Staging Site?

A staging site is an exact replica of your live website, but hosted on a private server or subdomain. It‘s like a secret digital hideout where you can make updates and test out changes without affecting the public-facing version of your site.

Think of your live website as opening night of a play. Your staging site is like the rehearsals leading up to the big show. It gives you a chance to work out the kinks, tweak your lines (or in this case, designs and code), and make sure everything is picture perfect before the curtain goes up.

Why Use a Staging Site?

The biggest reason is to minimize risk and eliminate surprises. With a staging site, you can:

🐞 Catch bugs and errors. It‘s much better to find and fix problems on a private staging site than on your live site with real traffic.

🧪 Test changes thoroughly. Install updates, experiment with new designs, and verify that everything works before making it public.

🎨 Play around without fear. Let your creativity run wild and try out new ideas. If something breaks, no biggie – it‘s only your staging site.

🔒 Keep your live site safe. Staging sites create a barrier between your experiments and your live environment. If something goes wrong in staging, your live site will still be OK.

📈 Improve your site‘s reliability. Staging sites lead to more stable releases with fewer issues. After all, 88% of online consumers are less likely to return to a website after a bad experience.

What Does a Staging Site Workflow Look Like?

A basic staging workflow has three key parts:

Development: This is where you make changes to your site, whether it‘s tweaking code, installing updates, or creating new content. These changes are made on a local environment on your computer.
Staging: When your changes are ready, you push them to your staging environment. The staging site should be a mirror image of your live site, just not publicly accessible. This is where you‘ll test your changes and get feedback from stakeholders.
Production: Once you‘ve verified that everything is working properly on your staging site, it‘s time to deploy to production – aka, your live site. This makes all your hard work visible to real users.

Here‘s a handy diagram of how it works:

graph LR
A[Development] -- Push changes --> B[Staging]
B -- Test and verify --> C[Production]

The beauty of this process is that it creates a one-way flow from development to staging to production. You‘re not making changes directly to your live site. And if you discover issues in staging, you can roll back the changes before they ever see the light of day.

How to Create a Staging Site (With or Without Code)

Now that you know the why, let‘s tackle the how. The process for setting up a staging site varies depending on your specific tools and platforms, but the general concept is the same.

Many hosting providers and CMS platforms have built-in staging environments or helpful plugins to simplify the process. Let‘s walk through two common examples: HubSpot CMS Hub and WordPress.

Set Up a Staging Site in HubSpot CMS Hub

HubSpot‘s CMS Hub is an all-in-one platform for building and managing websites. It comes with a handy staging environment called Content Staging that allows you to test page changes before publishing.

Here‘s how to use it:

In your HubSpot account, go to Marketing > Website > Website Pages.
Click the "More tools" dropdown and select "Content staging."
Use the "Manage" tab to see your current pages. Hover over a page and click "Stage" to create a staged version.
Choose whether to clone the existing page or start fresh with a new page. If cloning, click "Stage Page."
Make your edits in the page editor. You can also create brand new pages from the Content Staging dashboard by clicking "Create a new staged page."
When you‘re ready to publish, go to the "Publish" tab, select your page(s), and click "Publish # pages to live domain."

That‘s it! You can push your page changes live with confidence, knowing that you tested them fully in the staging environment first.

Create a Staging Site for WordPress

WordPress is the world‘s most popular CMS, powering over 40% of all websites. While WordPress doesn‘t have built-in staging, many hosting providers offer tools to set it up. And if yours doesn‘t, there are plugins available.

Let‘s look at a few options:

Staging on Managed WordPress Hosts

If you‘re using a managed WordPress host, check if they have a staging feature. Many do, including:

Bluehost: Navigate to My Sites, click on the site you want to stage, then click the "Staging" tab. Follow the prompts to create a staged copy of your site.
SiteGround: In the Site Tools dashboard, go to WordPress > Staging. Click "Create New Staging Copy" and SiteGround will clone your site to a staging environment.
WP Engine: From your User Portal, select your environment and click "Copy Environment." Configure your settings, then use the "Copy Environment" button to clone to staging.

The specific steps may vary, but the basic idea is to click a button to copy your site files and database to a separate staging area. Test away, then use the deploy or push option to make the staged version live.

Using a WordPress Staging Plugin

If you need to DIY your staging setup, look no further than free plugins. One popular option is WP Staging.

Here‘s how to use it:

Install and activate the WP Staging plugin.
Go to WP Staging > Sites / Start.
Click "Create New Staging Site." Choose a name and click "Start Cloning."
When it‘s done, click "Open Staging Site" to view the copy and log in with your normal credentials.
Make changes and test them on the staging site.
To deploy, go back to WP Staging and click "Push Staging Site to Live."

The plugin handles making a copy of your site files and database, so you can update the staging version without touching your live site. It‘s a handy option if your host lacks a staging tool.

When Should You Use a Staging Site?

The short answer? Early and often. A staging site should be part of your regular website management process, not an afterthought. Here are some specific times to fire yours up:

☑️ Installing updates: Use staging to install and test new versions of your CMS, plugins, themes, etc. Make sure the updates play nicely with your existing setup before pushing to production.

🎨 Redesigning pages or your entire site: Designing a whole new look for your site? Build it on staging first. That way you can take your time perfecting every detail without worrying about downtime.

🛠️ Adding new features or tools: Whenever you‘re adding something new to your site – like an ecommerce store, membership portal, or live chat tool – stage it first to avoid surprises.

🙋 Training team members: Staging is the perfect playground to train marketing teammates on how to use your CMS. They can learn by doing without fear of breaking your live site.

🔍 Troubleshooting issues: If you‘re experiencing a pesky website issue, recreate it on staging and dig into the code there. It beats trying to troubleshoot on your live site with the pressure of real traffic.

What to Test on Your Staging Site

OK, you‘ve got a spiffy new staging site set up. Now what? It‘s time to put it through its paces. Here are some key things to test before calling it ready for production:

📱 Functionality across devices: Open your staging site on desktop and mobile devices. Click every link, fill out every form, open every menu. Note any wonky behavior.

💬 Content updates: Read through your new copy with a fine-tooth comb. Check for typos, formatting issues, and unclear messaging.

🎨 Design and layout: Look at your staging site with fresh eyes. Make sure the design is pixel-perfect and matches your vision. Verify that images load properly.

⚡ Performance: Use tools like Google PageSpeed Insights to test your page load speeds. Look for opportunities to optimize code, compress images, etc.

🔎 SEO: Review your title tags, meta descriptions, heading structure, and URL slugs. Make sure your new pages are set up for search success.

🔒 Security: If you‘re adding any new tools or plugins, research them carefully. Test all security measures on staging, like SSL certificates and login processes.

When Staging Isn‘t Enough

So staging is great and all, but it‘s not always a perfect simulation of your live environment. Here are a few limitations to keep in mind:

🚫 No real user data: Staging sites typically have dummy data, not real user info. So you can‘t fully test things like ecommerce checkout flows or personalization features.

🚫 Smaller scale: Your staging site likely has fewer server resources than production. So it might not reveal issues that only arise under heavy traffic, like slow load times.

🚫 Different extensions: If you use third-party tools on your live site (think analytics, live chat, etc.), you may not want them running on staging. Excluding them means you can‘t test the complete experience.

Does that mean staging is pointless? Heck no. It‘s still an essential part of the web development process. Just remember that additional testing on production is often necessary for the full picture.

Go Forth and Stage

If you made it this far, you‘re well on your way to staging site mastery. 🏆

You now know why staging environments are important, how to create one using various tools, and what to look for when testing your site. Bravo!

Here‘s the key takeaway: A staging site is one of the most powerful tools in your website management arsenal. It empowers you to test changes thoroughly, release new features confidently, and keep your live site humming along smoothly. ✨

So the next time you‘re itching to launch a big update, take a breath and set up a staging site first. You‘ll catch more bugs, gather better feedback, and avoid those awkward "um, the site is down" conversations with your boss. It‘s well worth the effort.

Your website visitors (and your stress levels) will thank you. Happy staging!

How to Build a Staging Site to Test Your Website Before Going Live