How do I use the staging platform for my WordPress website?

If you're hosted on our WordPress platform, your hosting comes with a staging environment which effectively means you can create a "copy" of your website. This is so you can play around with different elements of your site, such as themes or design changes, without affecting your live website.

If you decide to keep your changes, you can simply roll them out in a couple of clicks and your "new" website will take over the old one seamlessly. Please note you/your visitors may need to clear their browser cache to see the new changes instantly, and any changes that you've made to your live site since creating the staging site (such as publishing new posts) that aren't copied over to the staging site will be lost when the staging site goes live.

Please note that your staging contributes to your web space, so if your website is 5GB and you set up a staging site, you'll then be using 10GB. Instructions on how to delete your staging site and clear some space can be found at the bottom of this article.

Also note that a staging site generally has the format e.g. staging.mysite.com, and is different to a temporary site e.g. mysite.lyricalstaging.com.

 

If you have a membership or subscription-based website and use Access Ally: Access Ally has not been developed in a way that understands staging sites. You will need to disable it beforehand, and only re-enable it again once your site is fully live, as otherwise duplicate payments will be taken. Please contact our support team via ticket if you're uncertain or need help.



To set up a staging site for your website

1. Visit cp.lyricalhost.com and log in with your usual details. If you have not logged into LyricalCP before then you can find the instructions for logging in for the first time here: https://hub.lyricalhost.com/knowledgebase/110/How-do-I-log-in-to-Lyrical-CP-my-website-control-panel.html

2. Under "WordPress Tools," click the "Staging" icon.

3. Click the "Create Staging Site" button to create the site. This may take up to 30 minutes to complete depending on the size of your website. If you're still waiting after this time, please raise a support ticket so we can investigate.

4. Click the "Visit Staging" button to access the staging version of your website and test out your changes.

5. Once the Clone has been completed you can access the staging site's Admin Dashboard with the following information: https://staging.yourdomainnamegoeshere.com/wp-admin , this will direct you to the WordPress Admin Login, please note the Login details will be the same as they were prior to creating the staging site.

 

Create a new version of your staging site

If you already have a staging site setup, you will see "Success - your clone in complete!".

If you see this message, and you'd like to create a new staging site based on your current live site (this will overwrite your existing staging site with your current live site and any changes you've made on the staging site will be lost) as follows:

1.  Tick the box "I can confirm this will overwrite my existing, staging website data."

2. Click the button "Clone into Staging."

3. Wait for this to finish; this may take up to 30 minutes to complete depending on the size of your website, but if you're still waiting after this time, please raise a support ticket so we can investigate.

4. Click the "Visit Staging" button to access the staging version of your website and test out your changes.

5. Once complete, you can access the staging site's Admin Dashboard with the following information: https://staging.yourdomainnamegoeshere.com/wp-admin , this will direct you to the WordPress Admin Login, please note the Login details will be the same as they were prior to creating the staging site.

 

Deleting your staging site

If you already have a staging site setup, you will see "Success - your clone in complete!". If you'd like to delete your staging site (any changes you've made on staging will be lost), simply click the "Delete Staging" button. This will free up web space on your hosting account.

Please raise a ticket if you've got any questions.

 

Making the staging site live

Once you've tested out the elements on your staging site, and you're happy to take the staging version and make it the live version of your site, you will need to tick the box "I can confirm this will overwrite my existing, live website data", and click "Clone into Live". This may take up to 30 minutes to complete depending on the size of your website, but if you're still waiting after this time, please raise a support ticket so we can investigate.

Please note, only do this once you've confirmed the following : nothing has changed on your live site since you created your staging site. If you've made any changes to the live site after you created the staging site, these will be lost when you copy your staging site to your live site.

Please raise a ticket if you've got any questions!

  • staging, staging platform, staging environment, website staging
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