Hi @smoossun,
Sorry to hear of your frustration in setting up Site Kit on a staging site. Hopefully we can determine the cause and ensure you can view data from your staging site, based on what you see on your production site.
So we can provide you with sufficient troubleshooting steps, please share the following:
- A screen recording of your set up experience. You can use a service such as Loom or RecordIt to share a link to any such video. To share privately you can use this form.
- When attempting set up with your staging site, from a Chrome browser incognito window do you see any browser console errors on the same screen where this error appears? If so please share any such errors.
- Is your staging site live and accessible, or are you using a local set up only accessible from your machine?
Let me know if you have any questions with the above. Once we have this information we can provide you with some suitable troubleshooting steps, which may include troubleshooting third party plugins or checking for the same experience from a different staging site, using a disposable WordPress site with a service such as TasteWP.
Thanks James, I’ve screen captured the setup error and forwarded the video along with site info on the provided link.
Many thanks for going to the trouble of creating a video of this. Very useful to see what’s occurring. Based on this error appearing instantly after clicking on the continue button during OAuth I suspect there is something at host level with your development site. In order to check this further can you attempt Site Kit set up using the same staging site steps but from this URL, which will create a temporary WordPress install for you to test with.
If you need assistance with this set up let me know. Don’t set up Site Kit immediately on that temporary site, please install the Staging site plugin first and follow the steps as you did with your current staging site.
If the same occurs, we’ll then perform some checks with the plugins active on your staging site, or perform a reset of Site Kit on your staging site only.
If the same does not occur, and you can view data from your live site we can perform some troubleshooting at host level.
OK, so I installed the dev tools on the test site and confirmed the auth codes with the site kit plugin. When trying to login with my Google ID, I got an alert saying:
Google hasn’t verified this app
The app is requesting access to sensitive info in your Google Account. Until the developer (smoossun@gmail.com) verifies this app with Google, you shouldn't use it.
If you’re the developer, submit a verification request to remove this screen. Learn more
With the back to Safety button.
Thanks for checking. There should be an option to proceed, and bypass that check. I say so because this staging helper plugin uses an individuals own credentials, which is your own as referenced in the message. Only you will be able to view the data.
Let me know how you get on after attempting set up using this temporary WordPress site once more.
OK, bypassed the check and it installed and completed setting up the plugin for the temp site.
Nice troubleshooting! That means that there is something either with the staging sites plugin environment, or with the hosting which is blocking set up.
Let’s check your plugin environment first. To do so, from your staging site please follow the steps below:
- Reset Site Kit (Tools > Available Tools > Reset Site Kit)
- Install and activate the Health Check & Troubleshooting plugin.
- Navigate to “Plugins > Health Check & Troubleshooting > Troubleshoot”.
- From the same screen click on the “Available Plugins” tab at the top right and then click on the “Enable” option next to “Site Kit by Google”
- Attempt to setup your staging site once more, following the usual steps as you did previously
Let me know how you get on with the above.
Ok, I’ve carried out all 5 steps with the troubleshoot enabled and ended up with the same error.
In that case there is something at host level impacting Site Kit set up with your staging site. While this is typically outside of the scope of plugin support, if you’d like to share the following maybe I can identify something:
- Do you see any warnings or errors when checking your Site Health status (Tools > Site Health > Status), which differs from your Site Health information requested above? Such errors may include REST endpoint references.
- Are you familiar with any ModSecurity or other features of your hosting platform?
Let me know if you have any questions with the above.
OK, progress. Nothing on point 1, but I disabled the firewall in Plesk and tried again and it ran with no issues – thanks!
But, I’ve now got a couple of pink panels saying insufficient permissions in Seach Console – so you won’t be able to see stats from it on the dashboard.
Any ideas?
I’ve now added the GA permissions and can see more elements of the data, but Search traffic over the last 28 days and ‘See how your content is doing’ (first panel) are still showing Insufficient Permissions.
Getting there 🙂
Getting there indeed! Thanks for the update, and nice troubleshooting.
What I suspect may be happening now, is a different Google account may have been used when connecting the staging site. Alternatively, there may have been some permissions changes to the connected Search Console property.
In order to resolve this, can you access the link below, but replace the yoursite reference with your primary site URL (not your staging site URL), using the email you currently used for setting up Site Kit on the staging site:
https://search.google.com/u/4/search-console/settings?resource_id=https%3A%2F%2Fyoursite.co.uk%2F
Let me know if you see any permissions error. If so please try clicking on the “Verify your ownership” button.
Perfect, yes all good now I’ve clicked the Verify button and the dashboard is fully loaded.
Thanks again for all your help James, I really appreciate it!
That’s great! Many thanks for the update, and troubleshooting efforts.
If you run into any further errors, or encounter issues, be sure to reach out.
If you have a moment free it would be great if you could also share an honest review of the plugin. We’d love to hear from you, in particular as it sounds like you’ve been a Site Kit user on your main site for some time.
