A staging site is a copy of your live WordPress website. It allows you to test plugins, themes, updates and code changes without immediately affecting visitors.
The staging tool is available on our dedicated WordPress Hosting platform.
Creating Your Staging Site
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Open your WordPress hosting control panel.
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Under WordPress Tools, select Staging.
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Select Create Staging Site.
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Allow a few minutes for the cloning process to finish.
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Select Visit Staging to open the copied website.
The staging website uses a staging subdomain. You can sign in to its WordPress dashboard and edit it as you would your live website.
Changes made to the staging copy do not automatically appear on your live website.
Working with Staging Files and Data
The platform stores the staging website’s files in staging_html, separate from the live website’s public_html directory.
Developers can edit staging files using File Manager or FTP.
The staging process also creates a separate database, identified in the documentation as SCSTAGING. You can access it through MySQL Databases using phpMyAdmin.
Important: Make sure you are working on the staging files and database, not the live versions.
Testing Your Changes
Before publishing, check:
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Desktop and mobile layouts.
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Menus, links and images.
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Contact forms.
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Login and registration.
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Store checkout or membership functions, where applicable.
For stores and sites with external integrations, review payment, email and scheduled-task settings before testing. A copied website may retain live service credentials.
Publishing Staging to Live
Publishing staging overwrites existing live website data. It is not a selective merge of your changes.
Before proceeding, create a fresh live-site backup and check for new orders, registrations, posts or other activity received since the staging copy was created.
To publish:
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Return to WordPress Tools > Staging.
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Select the checkbox confirming that the operation will overwrite your existing live website data.
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Select Clone into live.
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Allow a few minutes for the process to complete.
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Test your live website.
