WordPress Staging is a feature on RunCloud that allows you to create a copy of your WordPress web application for testing, development, or demonstration purposes.
You can use RunCloud’s staging feature to make changes to your website without affecting your live site. You can also merge your staging site with your live site when you are ready to apply the changes.
Creating a WordPress Staging Environment
To create a WordPress staging site on RunCloud, you need to follow these steps:
- Go to your RunCloud dashboard and select the WordPress application for which you want to create the staging environment.
- Click on the “Staging” menu, and select “Get Started“.
- On the next screen, you can enable site authentication to protect your staging site with a username and password. This will make sure that should anyone accidentally come across this site, they will not be able to access it and confuse it for the real version.
- You can also enable the “Discourage Search Engine” option to prevent your staging site from being indexed by search engines.
- Next, you can specify the domain name that you want to use for your staging site. You can either use your own domain name or use the test domain provided by RunCloud.
- Finally, click on the “Deploy Staging” button and wait for RunCloud to clone your web application.
Viewing Your Staging Site
Once the staging site is ready, you can visit it by by browsing the link that you specified earlier, or by clicking on the “Open Site” button in the RunCloud dashboard.
If you have enabled HTTP authentication, you will be asked to enter the username and password that you specified earlier.
If you do not provide correct login credentials, the server will show a HTTP 401 error and you will not be able to view the website.
Working with Staging Sites
You can work with your staging site as a normal web application on RunCloud. You can change the settings, install plugins, update themes, or add content as you wish.
The Staging site itself does not have the Staging option available, as it is a Staging site.
Synchronising Changes Between Sites
After you have made the changes to your staging site, you might want to apply them to your live site. Or you might want to discard all the changes on your live site and sync it back to the live site. In both of these scenarios, you can use RunCloud’s sync feature.
When you want to apply the changes from your staging site to your live site, you can use the “Sync” option from the “Staging” menu. You will see the source (staging) and the destination (live) web applications that you want to merge.
If you want to change the direction of the sync, click on the “two way arrow” in the middle of the screen. Next, specify whether you want to migrate all database tables or only the selected tables.
Once you have configured the settings, click on “Sync” button to start the process.
Delete A Staging Site
If you no longer need your staging environment, you can delete it easily. You can do this from the “Staging” menu or from the web application list on RunCloud. Deleting your staging site will not affect your live site.
Can I Restore My Staging Site to an Earlier Version?
Once you’ve made a duplicate copy of your Staging site, you have made a copy of what that website was like at the time. If you want to restore your website to an earlier version, you should use the RunCloud backups feature to save your staging site before you make any changes, and restore it as you need it.
Alternatively, you can start using git to manage your WordPress website.
For more information about WordPress Staging on RunCloud, you can check out How to Easily Create a WordPress Staging Site in RunCloud