How To Create A Staging Site - WordPress Staging Plugins Free & Pro

Stop stressing about updates by using WordPress Staging Plugins to clone your site & test updates first!

There's nothing more frustrating than rolling out an update and finding that your website has gone offline, been corrupted or crashed. As a WordPress user, this is a genuine concern. Ask anyone who's run a WordPress 5.5 update as well as Elementor 3.0 and they'll tell you just how stressful it can be.

In this tutorial, I'll show you how to use the free WP Staging plugin to create a staging site so you can test all your updates before updating your live site.

If you want more features that will help make the process of both creating a staging site and also pushing the changes from your staging site back to your live site, then WP Staging Pro may be the better option.

Good news, I'll be showing you exactly how to use WP Staging Pro and just how easy it is to manage both your updates, staging sites and choosing exactly what you want to push back over to the live site.

So, if you're looking for an easy, all in one solution, be sure to follow along with this video and you'll be creating staging sites and reducing your stress levels in minutes.

Take your WordPress website and skills to the next level!

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[stratos-tutorials]

Thanks Paul. A setting that is a must do before creating the staging website is "Disable admin authorization". This way you will be able to do a GTMetrix comparison between the live and staging websites. If you create the staging website first and then change the setting, it will not apply for the staging site you have already created. You will have to do the process from the start.

[lv]

Hi Paul, great video. What about caching plugins (wp-rocket), google analytics, mainWP child, SEO (rankmath) and wordfence security when creating a staging site? Do I need to disable them on the staging site or can I leave them activated when working on the staging site? What do you think about the staging solution from the hosting (softaculous)? Regards, Luc

[ahesse]

Right on Paul! One things I noticed which left me a bit confused: You mentioned that you'd be showing a free plugin and then "the pro version of this plugin". First you show WP Staging and then WPvivid Pro. Aren't these plugins from two different providers? Do you prefer WPvivid over the pro version of WP Staging? Or, was it an honest mistake?

[pradeepkumarrana]

Hi, I have a Question. Can anyone help me?

1. I have a membership site
2. I use this plugin for staging
3. after staging I change some database and code in my site
4. in between the changes, a user registered on my live site.
5. Then I live my staging site into the live site.

Can the user data store in my database as it is OR it replaces?

[PatrickHallScreenwriter]

So from the staging site you can change the theme and then push out/over?

[marcig]

Great video, thanks for your content. How do you use duplicator with this?

[alanjacobs]

So how do you handle plugin licenses on staging sites? I have plugins with single site licenses which nearly always mess up with staging sites. Some move the license to the new staging site - bad for the live site- others just refuse to work as insufficient licenses.

[PswACC]

Maybe you can make a second part to this video showing how to not override new activity like Woocommerce purchase orders on the live site. The obvious answer is to not override the database tables related to the orders. I checked it out and it wasn't that straight forward.

[richburmond]

Hm so Paul, any reason I should be using wp staging or anything else than wpvivid staging? I have wp vivid backup pro, so also staging so that is an easy one. But I need to know if when I push the staging to live, webshop orders that were made inbetween that time will actually be added to the new live site. Does that work? Or does it literally remove the live site and only push the new staging in

[ersinortagenc]

HELPP !!! first of all, thank you for your help, I've done my staging sites and it worked great. Then I wanted to import everything I've done on staging site to my original site. I've used updraft plugin to export and import. But when I imported database of staging site to original site, original site has turned into staging with stagings' domain. Now I cant find my original site, It is missing. Please Help me. How can I solve this issue. It's like sites are in limbo.

[robertseitzberg]

Ok my one big question here is that I talked to Elementor support and they said that when you make changes with Elementor it potentially adds meta data to the database. If you create a staging site, make some changes using Elementor, then you hit "Update Staging" does that only update the database with the "changes" from the live site? If it replaces the database, then wouldn't it replace some of the metadata that Elementor adds to the database? If the plugin can differentiate what is in the live site database that is different from when you copied it over and then can copy it over, then this plugin does exactly what I want. I am setting up a social network for a client using Buddyboss, and the users will be highly active on the site so If I am making changes on the staging, I need to know If this plugin will only update the staging with the changes on the live site by the users but won't overwrite anything in the database that I changed while working on the staging. If that is the case then this is definitely the solution I have been looking for.

[agencyx]

you dont use wpwvivid for staging sites?

[ivanso]

Is there a recommended way to create a remote staging site for client access from a local development version? I’m assuming WP staging only works on sites hosted on the same hosting environment. Thanks

[bassemkhozam]

Thanks Paul for sharing. The free version looks nice but honestly I didn’t like the pricing of their pro version. It’s somewhat misleading. They state that all plans are “lifetime”, however they are valid only for 1 year of support and 1 year of updates. Not really a lifetime plans.

[HelloWORLD_Verlag]

Hi There! If we understand the tutorial right you are using the free staging plugin "WP Staging" but you use the paid version of WPVivid. Why dont you use the paid version of "WP Staging"?

[davidadams]

I see that you use SiteGround as your hosting provider. I assume you've tried SiteGround's staging tool. How does it compare to WP Staging?

[webdocdesign]

Does the wp staging add more inodes if staging? Is it doubled or just some of them.

[kerawelt]

Many thanks for this very good video !

[terrykeyes]

Hi WPTuts, I was looking for a way to contact you directly but I could not find it on your site. I hope this is a good place to reach you. I have a problem with elementor that I can't solve and I was wondering if you might have a solution. It is unrelated to this video. I am trying to create a dynamic nav menu where it displays only child pages on a parent page. I was able to achieve this functionality with the dynamic content for elementor plugin using the parent-child menu widget. The issue I'm having is that the widget does not have an option for mobile menus and I do not know how to create a custom mobile menu to integrate with this widget. I've looked at other nav menu options for elementor but they only let you select a menu from list of created menus in wordpress but this widget creates the menu dynamically so that is not an option. If you have any ideas or suggestions I would greatly appreciate it!