Managing a WordPress blog is fun and easy. However, when you start attracting a lot of traffic, that changes and you can no longer afford to have your site down. No matter how careful you are, you might make some changes that cause your site to break, which is bad for both your visitors and your site’s SEO.
Rather than risk making changes on a live site, find a safe place to test your changes before releasing them to the public. If you like adding new plugins or modifying your theme regularly, you’ll love the Staging feature.
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Staging is a popular word that means "a method of presenting a play or other dramatic performance."
A staging site is exactly what you need to achieve these goals. It’s a private copy of your official WordPress site where you can test changes. Once you’re done testing, you can safely publish your changes to your live site for visitors to see. Whether you’re adding a new WordPress plugin, testing new code, or changing your WordPress theme, you can do it all on a staging site and go live with just one click!
Staging isn’t a new feature, but I’ve been wanting to talk about it for a while now because ShoutMeLoud users who use WordPress will find it very useful. To help you create a staging site for your blog, I’m going to show you three different methods and tell you which one I think is the best!
Option 1: Choose a host with staging capabilities
The easiest and usually best way to create a WordPress staging site is to choose a host that offers dedicated staging capabilities.
While the other two methods I’m about to show you do allow you to create a staging site on any host, neither method offers the same level of functionality or is as easy to use.
Here are some specific features most hosts offer that make staging easier:
- One-click push : This allows you to easily move a staging version of your website to your live server and vice versa.
- Automatic backups : Some hosts, like Kinsta, will automatically back up your site when you go live on a staging site for added security.
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)-friendly protections : The host automatically implements SEO protections to prevent any duplicate content issues and ensure the privacy of your staging site.
If you’re looking for WordPress hosting with built-in staging capabilities, here are some great options.
- Kinsta – Kinsta offers great staging features that make it easy to push content back and forth. It also automates the backup process. For more information, check out my Kinsta review .
- WP Engine – Similar to Kinsta, WP Engine offers easy-to-use staging features that can be accessed directly from the WordPress dashboard. For more information, as well as some of my negatives about WP Engine, read my WP Engine review .
- SiteGround – SiteGround offers dedicated staging capabilities… but only on its highest-tier GoGeek WordPress hosting plans. For more information, check out our SiteGround review .
If choosing a host with dedicated staging capabilities is not an option, there are two other ways to get the job done.
Option 2. Create a staging site from your dashboard using the WP Staging plugin
WP Staging is a freemium plugin that allows you to easily create a staging site even if your host doesn’t offer this feature.
It’s very easy to use and has virtually many of the same benefits of the built-in staging site discussed above:
- You can create your staging site with just the click of a button.
- It is SEO-friendly because it hides the staging version of your website from search engines and other visitors.
While there is a free version, it has one big limitation:
There is no button to automatically push your changes from the staging site to the production site. So while it is easy to create a staging site, you will need to manually make changes on the production site again unless you purchase WP Staging Pro (starting at 89.00 EUR).
How to use the free version of WP Staging
Using the free version of WP Staging is very simple.
First I would recommend having a recent backup of your site just in case anything goes wrong, althoughI have never had any issues it is better to be safe than sorry .
You can then install and activate the plugin like any regular WordPress plugin.
Once that’s done, go to the new WP Staging tab in your WordPress dashboard and click Create new staging site:
Give your staging site a name and click Start Cloning :
The plugin will automatically complete the cloning process. Once it’s finished, you’ll see a button that will take you to the staging version of your site:
When you go to your staging site, you’ll need to log in using the same WordPress admin credentials as you used for your live site.
You can then safely start making changes to your staging site. WP Staging will turn the admin toolbar orange so you can easily identify that you are on the staging site:
Since the site is private to search engines and anonymous visitors, you don’t have to worry about any duplicate content issues.
Keep in mind - if you want to be able to automatically transfer changes on your staging site to the live version of your site, you’ll need to purchase the Pro version .
3. Manually create a staging site using the Duplicator plugin
If you’re willing to put in some manual work, you can also use the popular Duplicator plugin to create a WordPress staging site.
Duplicator is technically a WordPress migration plugin. However, because it makes site migration so easy, you can use it to migrate back and forth between your live and staging sites.
I’ve already written an article on how to migrate a WordPress site using the Duplicator plugin , so I won’t give you another tutorial on that.
But I will share some tips on how to use Duplicator, especially for staging.
First, I recommend that you create a staging site on a subdomain of your domain, such as staging.yourdomain.com . Click here to learn more about subdomains.
Once you have a subdomain, use Duplicator to create an identical copy of your live site on a staging subdomain.
Then, you simply make the subdomain private to ensure that neither Google nor nosy website visitors can access your staging site.
To be truly safe, I recommend doing two things:
- Add a noindex tag to your staging site to ensure that Google doesn’t index it. To do this, go to Settings → Reading and check the box labeled “Prevent search engines from indexing this site”:
Remember to only do this on your staging site — not on your live site.
- Use a plugin like Hide My Site to password protect your entire staging WordPress site. Alternatively, you can use a .htaccess file to restrict access to just your IP address, but this is a slightly more advanced method.
Doing these two things will ensure that your staging site remains 100% private.
The Easiest Way to Create a Staging WordPress Site
If possible, choosing a host with built-in staging capabilities is the best way to access a WordPress staging site. For this, I recommend Kinsta or SiteGround , depending on your budget and the number of sites you need to host.
If that’s not an option, the WP Staging plugin offers another user-friendly approach. Just remember that you’ll need to pay for the Pro version to automatically launch your staging site.
Finally, if you want something 100% free, you can always use the Duplicator plugin. Keep in mind, though, that this method is more manual and technically complex.
As per my workflow, I use Kinsta’s hosted staging feature. I’ve used it before on WPEngine, but Kinsta takes staging to a whole new level. It would be great if you can host your WordPress site on a web host that offers staging by default. Alternatively, you can use any of the recommended solutions.
In the future, if I find a better, easier-to-use solution for creating staging sites, I’ll share it with you all. But for now, I want to hear from you. Do you use staging sites for your blog? Why?
Please share your opinions using the comments section below.
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