So easy to use, as long as you don’t need to push changes

Initially, I was daunted by the prospect of setting up a staging site, but with WP Staging it’s literally just one click and then some waiting. (Copying the files does seem to be quite a bit slower than with other staging solutions I’ve used.) No manual setup necessary.

As a bonus, you can have multiple different staging sites at the same time–as far as I know, the only hard limit is the size of your FTP site. (The staging site exists as a subdomain of your main site, living in its own folder on your FTP site.)

Another feature I like is that, if you want your staging site to reflect changes made to your live site, you can selectively update folders rather than needing to erase the sandbox and make a new one.

FYI, to address one common question about this plugin, the entire staging site is password protected by default. (Use your wp-admin login.) To disable this (which is necessary if you want to third parties to be able to interact with the staging site, e.g., to run site speed tests, or to view the site as a non-admin), just disable the WP Staging plugin on the staging site.

If you need to be able to push changes from your FTP site to your live one, it might be worth shelling out for the paid version of WP Staging or finding a different solution. I never actually tried pushing my changes, since the revisions I was testing were easy to recreate on the live site, but with the free version, pushing changes does seem to be a somewhat manual process–or at least not as easy as just clicking a button. (Then again, it might be easier than I’m thinking; as I said, I haven’t actually tried it.)

I just switched to a host that provides a staging feature, so I no longer need WP Staging, but before I go I wanted to make sure to leave a thank-you, since it’s been such a great help.

• This topic was modified 4 years, 8 months ago by laura6.