Staging sites in WPCD work a little differently when compared to your traditional hosts like WPEngine, Cloudways etc. We generally consider staging sites the same as any other site – just with different configuration options.
The primary reason that traditional hosts treat staging sites differently is to prevent you from using them as regular sites. If you purchase a 2-site hosting plan, they don’t want you to end up with 4 live sites.
They might also choose to place your staging sites on less powerful servers or otherwise restrict the resources assigned to them. Some might also exert control over caching, force passwords to be used and enable other minor options that just get in the way of your work.
When you control your own servers, your staging sites no longer need to suffer from these limitations.
They’re 100% your resources so there’s no need to make that artificial distinction between staging sites and live sites.
Additionally, you can create as many staging sites as you like – most traditional hosts will only allow one staging site for each live site in your service plan.
If you have even a slightly more complex deployment plan – eg: dev, stage, prod, then having your own servers is probably a lot easier to manage rollouts than the restrictions you might encounter at traditional hosts.
To create a “staging” site in WPCD you have some choices:
- Clone your existing site to a new site on the same server
- Copy your site over an existing site on the same server
- Copy your existing site to a new site on another server.
Check out our documentation for more information and ideas on how to create staging sites on your own servers.
Post Publication Notes
In WPCloudDeploy 4.13 we’ve introduced a simplified staging option along with some security options around it.
Edit History
12-22-2021: Updated to refer to WPCD 4.13 and the new Simplified Staging functions.
Availability
Some of the features discussed are only available in the latest fast-ring versions of WPCD – currently 4.10.x.
Release notes for WPCloudDeploy V4.10.5
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