Staging Sites
Use a staging site to clone your entire WordPress.com site for testing purposes. This guide will show you how to create a staging website on WordPress.com.
This feature is available on sites with the WordPress.com Creator or Entrepreneur plan.
How Staging Sites Work
The staging site feature copies your existing site to a new site. The new staging site’s address will start with staging followed by four random characters and the site address.
Your newly-created staging site is completely decoupled from the original site; any changes to one won’t impact the other.
The staging site will remain active as long as your production site (i.e., your main, live website) has an active plan. The production and staging sites share the same storage allocation, and storage is split 50/50 between the two.
Data Copied to a Staging Site
The following site-specific data is cloned to your staging site:
- Posts
- Pages
- Themes
- Plugins
- Media uploads
- Users
- Configuration options, API keys, or any database data stored with your site.
The following WordPress.com-specific data isn’t copied to your new site because these features are site-specific:
- Subscribers
- Likes
- Attached SSH keys
Features of a Staging Site
The staging site works very similarly to the production (live) site. SFTP/SSH and phpMyAdmin can be accessed in the same way at Settings → Hosting Configuration. You can install plugins, switch themes, and restore backups on the staging site, just like on the live site.
Customize Search Engine Behavior
By default, search engines will be blocked from indexing the staging site. However, this behavior can be overridden with a custom robots.txt file placed in the root folder of your website.
How to Create a Staging Site
To create a staging site, follow these steps:
- Visit your site’s dashboard.
- Navigate to Settings → Hosting Configuration.
- Scroll down to the Staging site section.
- Click the “Add staging site” button:
If you have already created a staging site, you will find a “Manage staging site” button instead:
Once you have created your staging site, you can find it under your list of sites and via the “Manage staging site” button at Settings → Hosting Configuration as explained above.
Sync Data Between Staging and Production
This is a beta feature. If you find that something does not work as expected or you would like to share ideas on how to improve this feature, please contact us and share your feedback.
You can synchronize the database and filesystem between the staging environment and the production (live) environment in both directions. The only exception is for sites using WooCommerce — WooCommerce data cannot be synced back to production due to risks in overwriting orders received after the staging site was created.
Below, learn how to Synchronize Production to Staging and Synchronize Staging to Production.
Synchronize Production to Staging
Before you start working with themes or plugins, we recommend making the staging site a fresh copy of the production site. If you would like to refresh your staging site and make it a copy of the production site again, follow these steps:
- Visit your staging site’s dashboard.
- Navigate to Settings → Hosting Configuration.
- Scroll down to the Staging site section.
- Locate the “Database and file synchronization” section.
- Select the “Production to staging” option.
- Click the “Synchronize” button.
When the confirmation window appears, proceed by clicking “Synchronize.”
Synchronize Staging to Production
Follow the steps below to synchronize media files, plugins, themes, and/or database content, such as posts, pages, and menus, from your staging site back to your production (live) site.
When you are satisfied with your changes and would like to copy them from staging to production, follow these steps:
- Visit your staging site’s dashboard.
- Navigate to Settings → Hosting Configuration.
- Scroll down to the Staging site section.
- Locate the “Database and file synchronization” section.
- Select the “Staging into production” option.
- Select which parts of the staging site you wish to synchronize to your production site:
- Themes: Choose this option if you added new themes, upgraded existing ones to the new version, or edited theme files. Note that If you change your active theme, you must activate it on the production site manually unless you synchronize the ‘Site Database‘, too.
- Plugins: Choose this option if you installed new plugins, upgraded existing ones to the new version, or edited plugin files. Note that If you activate or deactivate your plugins, you must do the same on the production site manually unless you synchronize the ‘Site Database‘ too.
- Media Uploads: Copy all files and directories in the uploads directory. You must also select ‘Site database‘ if you wish for the files to appear as media uploads in WordPress.
- wp-content Directory: Choose this to synchronize all files and directories in the wp-content directory other than themes, plugins, and uploads.
- Web Root: Select this to copy all files and directories in the WordPress root, including any non-WordPress files, excluding the
wp-contentdirectory. - Site Database (SQL): Choose this option if you added or edited posts or pages, uploaded new media, edited site templates using Site Editor, or performed other changes related to data stored in the database. Due to the risk of overwriting orders, this option cannot be enabled on sites with the WooCommerce plugin installed.
- Click the “Synchronize” button.
- When the confirmation window appears, proceed by clicking “Synchronize.”
Please be aware that copying a staging database to a production environment might result in losing existing data on the production site, as the staging data will replace it.
The PHP version in the production environment doesn’t automatically update to match the version you’ve set in staging. To ensure both environments use the same PHP version, you’ll need to manually update the PHP version in production as well. After you’ve finished syncing, you can change the production PHP version using this guide.
Delete a Staging Site
To remove your staging site, follow these steps:
- Visit your site’s dashboard.
- Navigate to Settings → Hosting Configuration.
- Scroll down to the Staging site section.
- Click the “Delete staging site” button:
Frequently Asked Questions
Who can create a staging site?
A staging site can be created by any administrator on your site. The site owner will always be added as the owner of the staging site, even if the staging site was created by another administrator.
What happens when I clone a site with WooCommerce enabled?
All WooCommerce data in the database will be cloned to the staging site, which may include customers, products, orders, or any other WooCommerce-related information stored in the database. We will also add the WP_ENVIRONMENT_TYPE=staging constant to the wp-config.php file, which some plugins may use to differentiate production and staging environments.
However, while WooCommerce is active on a site, the database cannot be synced back to production due to the risks of overwriting orders received after the staging site was created.
Can I create more than one staging site?
It is currently possible to create only one staging site per production site. You can create unlimited copies of your site via our Copy a Site feature.
Can I customize the staging site URL?
The staging site URL is created automatically by prepending “staging-[random-four-characters]” to the production site name. It’s not possible to edit this address or add a custom domain because a staging site is not intended to be used as a live site. To make a copy of your site intended for public viewing, take the steps in our Copy a Site guide instead.
Last updated: April 08, 2024
