Title: Installation
Last modified: July 12, 2021

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# Installation

 *  Resolved [jintellect](https://wordpress.org/support/users/jintellect/)
 * (@jintellect)
 * [4 years, 11 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/installation-258/)
 * I plan on adding Site Kit to our website, but have some questions before going
   forward.
 * We use a development and staging environment (essentially, at “dev” and “stg”
   subdomains, like dev.oursite.com). We normally develop using our development 
   environment, then test in staging, and then push to production.
 * My question is, where should the Site Kit installation come in? If I use our 
   _production_ WP Admin to install it, it’ll be overwritten the next time our _development_
   site gets pushed to stg and then production. So should I add it to our development
   WordPress first, but configure it to only track our production site? The Site
   Kit instructions advises uninstalling a helper plugin and then resetting Site
   Kit before pushing — so would I have to do this every time before pushing to 
   production?
 * Furthermore, we have pre-existing Google Analytics code on our site — I am assuming
   that should be removed before installing Site Kit?

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)

 *  Plugin Support [James Osborne](https://wordpress.org/support/users/jamesosborne/)
 * (@jamesosborne)
 * [4 years, 11 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/installation-258/#post-14652356)
 * Thanks for opening a support topic. To answer your question based on a typical
   site setup with a staging site the plugin should be installed on your production
   site first. Your site must be live and publicly accessible in order for data 
   to be collected on your site visits. After doing so you can install the helper
   plugin which you referenced and once setup correctly following this guide your
   data from your production site will be displayed on your staging environment (
   using your dev or stg subdomains).
 * In your case it sounds like you’re overwriting your production site each time.
   If you want to share details of how you’re doing so we’d be happy to check. We’d
   need to know are all your files overwritten, do you push plugin updates manually
   or are you using a particular plugin or service to push these updates? Providing
   your domain remains unchanged and the access tokens for a connected user remain
   intact Site Kit should remain working as normal.
 * > Furthermore, we have pre-existing Google Analytics code on our site — I am 
   > assuming that should be removed before installing Site Kit?
 * This does not need to be removed before setting up Site Kit. The plugin can recognize
   existing snippets placed and therefore not insert the Analytics snippets if a
   user chooses to use that existing manually place snippet.
 *  Thread Starter [jintellect](https://wordpress.org/support/users/jintellect/)
 * (@jintellect)
 * [4 years, 11 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/installation-258/#post-14657231)
 * Right, all the plugins are added in the WordPress Admin interface. The site gets
   overwritten each time. So would the solution be to install WordPress in our development
   environment, and then go through the installation flow each time we push to production?
   It seems tedious but I don’t know that there’s another way, given the way we 
   push the site up.
 *  Thread Starter [jintellect](https://wordpress.org/support/users/jintellect/)
 * (@jintellect)
 * [4 years, 11 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/installation-258/#post-14657767)
 * Sorry, by “install WordPress” I meant “install Site Kit.”
 *  Plugin Support [James Osborne](https://wordpress.org/support/users/jamesosborne/)
 * (@jamesosborne)
 * [4 years, 11 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/installation-258/#post-14659999)
 * You’ll need to install Site Kit on your live (production) site with the correct
   domain name. After doing if you’re looking to view statistics from your development
   environment (based on data going to your live site) you can setup your development
   site [as a staging site](https://sitekit.withgoogle.com/documentation/using-site-kit-on-a-staging-environment/).
 * Depending on how your site is overwritten you may need to setup Site Kit each
   time on your live site. If when you push your updates from development to production
   only updates files or database records are pushed there may be no action required,
   providing your WordPress constants remain the same. So really it depends on what
   get’s overwritten or updated for each update.
 * For additional information Site Kit users a proxy based service to connect a 
   users site to the various Google services. If a user uninstalls Site Kit while
   the plugin and various services remain connected (ie. they didn’t [reset](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1j4v4vwqlqhuJBWzlcc9GX6fgjVh6en1j/view?usp=sharing)
   or [disconnect](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fmqTDr1cr_zmfnvjgwe5Yw1qmHHnvIA4/view?usp=sharing)
   from Site Kit within the plugin) then upon installing the plugin once more services
   will remain connected. Users don’t need to go though the setup process once more.
   For that reason you may wish to have Site Kit installed but not setup within 
   the plugin on your development site. You’ll then only need to setup the plugin
   each time using the same Google account on your live site.
 * Let me know if you have any more questions on the above.
 *  [Bethany Chobanian Lang](https://wordpress.org/support/users/mxbclang/)
 * (@mxbclang)
 * [4 years, 11 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/installation-258/#post-14684881)
 * [@jintellect](https://wordpress.org/support/users/jintellect/) As we haven’t 
   received a response, I’ll mark this as resolved. Feel free to open a [new support topic](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/google-site-kit/#new-post)
   if you continue to encounter issues, or reopen this topic and we’d be happy to
   assist. Thank you!

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)

The topic ‘Installation’ is closed to new replies.

 * ![](https://ps.w.org/google-site-kit/assets/icon-256x256.png?rev=3141863)
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## Tags

 * [production](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/production/)
 * [Site Kit](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/site-kit/)
 * [staging](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/staging/)

 * 5 replies
 * 3 participants
 * Last reply from: [Bethany Chobanian Lang](https://wordpress.org/support/users/mxbclang/)
 * Last activity: [4 years, 11 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/installation-258/#post-14684881)
 * Status: resolved