How Do I Setup WooCommerce's Staging Site

A WooCommerce website has different and distinct requirements compared with other websites. To begin with, the duration of time that the shop is online is one of the most important aspects to think about. It almost needs to be an obsession for a savvy store owner.

WooCommerce staging is one tactic to help you maintain your online store as well as improving and updating it.

A general definition of a staging site is a replica of your website that isn't accessible to the public. This is an oversimplification, but if you think of it in this way it will be clear what it can do for your business. When you have a staging area established, you are able to make changes, evaluate the design options, and even work to improve your site's performance without having an impact on the live store.

In this article in this post, we'll teach the basics you should learn concerning WooCommerce staging. At the end of this article you'll be aware of whether it's right for you, and the best way to set it in order.

What Is Staging?

It's a method for you to manage your own live site and not show your site to the general public. It may seem counterintuitive until you realize the process of making changes on a staging website prior to moving them onto your live instance. It's a copy of your website that you'll use as a testbed before you release the good changes.

This concept is crucial to the entire procedure. There's no need to make changes to the live website in all cases. It's because one of those tweaks could cause an issue, whereupon your site may not function properly or is completely unresponsive, interrupting your users and sales.

All the while, your live site remains as it was in the past but isn't afflicted by the effects of your changes. Of course, once you have pushed those changes from the staging environment onto your live server, this can update your site.

On the whole, staging is a failsafe against problems with your website while you make changes. If you are satisfied that the modifications are safe to use then you are able to upload those changes to the live website.

Do You Need WooCommerce Staging?

We admit that this can seem like a convoluted procedure, particularly when most site owners are new to the concept of local-to-live development. However, WooCommerce staging makes good economic sense because of one main reason: uptime.

Public use of ecommerce is rising, and it's going to be almost ubiquitous in the near future. What's more, the most popular ecommerce marketplaces span the globe. This means you'll need to be ready with the constant flow of traffic.

Also, you'll want to maintain the website's availability.

WooCommerce staging allows you to ensure that your website is running while you safely test out the changes. There are many benefits to using WooCommerce staging:

• A staging website will never affect your live server, thus you're protected against blunders.
• You can test out redesigns and User Interface (UI) changes without impacting the end users.

There are lots more positives to WooCommerce staging and it is important to note that they are all unique to your own setup. Whatever the case, if you separate your site's development among local, staging sites and live ones, you'll keep your uptime in good shape and profits coming in.

How To Utilize WooCommerce Staging

We've discussed some instances of WooCommerce staging already, but it's worth giving you more detail on some specific situations.

When it comes to the core update that fails The damage could be irreparable. It's certainly more devastating than an error that can be fixed, but even with the former, you'll need an amount of work to complete. For example:

1. Next, you'll want to find the offending theme or plugin. This typically includes disabling the entire thing and carrying out individual checks.
2. In the next step, you'll have to determine the functions that the theme or plugin offers you. In the case of the first, your website appears unfinished and the other could result in some crucial functionality to disappear.

Although it's among the easiest issues to address, a theme or plugin compatibility issue can be a pain. Most important is the fact that it causes downtime which can result in a negative effect to your income and the number of visitors.

As you can see, WooCommerce staging is much more than an interactive design environment.

Utilizing Staging as a Backup

In one sense, yes, your entire website is accessible in another environment, in the event that the worst happens. But this "backup" is only a snapshot of your site in a different point in time.

This is especially true for WooCommerce websites, which might experience multiple sales per minute. Imagine the scenario where you bring a site up to staging and push it live after some time, only to wipe away many hundred orders.

Choices to WooCommerce Staging

• Your host might have ways to create staging but not all hosts do. It's a great alternative, as you don't have to go to another interface and dashboard.
• It is also possible to create a stage manually website. It's going to be a complex undertaking and requires a great deal of expertise to pull this off. It may not be the ideal choice for everyone, but it will be most effective.

It's always a good idea to start by examining what you're able to accomplish using your tools and programs. As such, your host is your first stop. must take a look.

What are the benefits of hosting with built-in Staging

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• You don't need to worry about hooking up your staging solution with your server, because it's already part of the system.
• What's more, you can better replicate the live server by with the host's infrastructure. Many times, the servers will share the same specifications, the software, and even optimization.
• There is no additional display or interface for content that you can interact with. This is crucial in terms of usability. A lot of hosts have an option to stage your content in one click that lets you choose which content to push and pull between servers too.

Since we are so convinced in the power of staging, it has it's own method of setting this up with the least quantity of hassle. In the next section, we'll take a look at what it offers.

The Reason Why Hosts are the Best for WooCommerce Staging

You get a full-featured solution with this one. That includes the ability to create, update the site, remove it, and even control your staging area. It is only a couple of clicks that are required between your site and a staged site, and it takes only minutes to move and pull information and files between your staging and live environments.

Dev is a no-cost tool that lets you push your local websites you create into a staging server. This means you can work and not use up any of your server's resources. Then, you can test those changes out in your staging server.

How To Set Up WooCommerce Staging (Using and the Dev)

However, before you fire your control panels it's recommended to plan out the way you'd like your procedure to flow.

1. Plan Out Your Workflow

This is a subject which we have discussed earlier in this article however WooCommerce staging isn't only the process of hosting your site on a different server to test out modifications. It's a holistic approach for your site's development. This is why you'll want to decide on this workflow before you do everything else.

We recommend taking an approach of three components to your development workflow:

• Local: The site is developed website within a protected environment, on your PC, giving you plenty of time and no pressure. However, you won't often have a complete synchronization between your local setup and live server.
• Staging The Staging feature will give you the possibility of testing the changes you make from the local configuration, and using a server that more accurately replicates your current site.
• Active: This is (of of course) your site that is public that's why it's most crucial to keep in mind as you make design changes and updates.

This process lets you take your time, without hitting any hosting resources. Then, you can scale the site as you close to producing-quality style. In addition to the above, you'll want to think about these aspects:

• Syncing of databases: This is one of the biggest considerations to make with your WooCommerce staging. The majority of the time, you will move a live database to your local and staging environments, but won't push that database back in its entirety. This is the difference between an effective staging tool and a software for migration.
• Syncing files: In a similar way to your database, you'll want to consider what you do to sync the files you work on back to your live website. It could be that you don't push everything, only the changed files. However, there's no reason not to do a complete sync if it makes sense.

If you are able to not touch any of your servers, then you will have less scope for "damage" as you progress through each step of the workflow. Another benefit from staging, we believe.

2. Set Up the Staging Environment

It's possible to keep this part shorter, since enabling staging within the section is so easy! Three steps are the most common you'll need to take. First, log into Your My dashboard and then navigate to the website you wish to make a stage for:

Next, change the environment to Live for staging. It is done via the drop-down menu on the top-right of the screen

3. Modify WooCommerce Staging

's staging functionality is fantastic and can be used with virtually all development environments. But, if you choose to make use of the Dev application, you will be able to access a few extra (and awesome) tools that will make your WooCommerce stage process easier.

You'll want to start with the import process to Dev. This is a breeze when you hit the Add Site button -- you'll choose Import from one of the choices available:

What do you need to accomplish from this point: Develop your website!

Whatever job you decide to do in Dev is okay with us. However, once you're done, you'll be looking to bring those changes in your staging setting.

4. The Push Changes are from Stage to Live

Much like importing your site to Dev and then pushing the changes back to your server is a snap. If you click into the site information panel inside Dev there's a Push to staging button:

It may sound too easy however, this is what you'll need to accomplish to get your site back to your server again. You'll need to accomplish a few additional tasks prior to putting those staging changes live.

Then, conduct a thorough test of your site when it's now on the server. This will catch any incompatibilities which your local system did not notice.

After you're done you're ready to put your changes live.

It's done via the My dashboard. When you have your stage environment displayed, look to the right-hand side. There's an Environment actions dropdown menu. If you choose Push to Live in this menu you'll notice the following:

Summary

Uptime of your site is crucial and is probably more crucial for WooCommerce sites than every other option you'll be considering. As such, you'll want to find ways to increase that uptime as much as possible in order to maximize the amount of time it takes to sell to customers. WooCommerce's staging feature is among the best ways to find that extra uptime, in addition to scaling, expanding designing, and optimizing your online store.

Do you believe WooCommerce staging can help your company? And in the event that it does, how do you think it will help you? Let us know in the comment section below!

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