A WordPress staging site can save you and your website from any current or potential error. It acts as, in simple layman’s terms, a ‘testing page’ or a ‘mock up’ of your live website that one can make changes to before launching it to the public. Even though there are various YouTube tutorials breaking down each step on how to create a staging site, the process might not be grasped overnight by beginners. Web development is an ongoing learning process that one needs to grapple and come to terms with.
What is a staging website?
A staging site is replica of your current site that is not live to the public yet. Any changes that you make on your staging site, won’t display on your live site. The staging site allows you to make alterations regarding certain elements that you weren’t comfortable with in a low-stress, controlled environment. It will provide you with the flexibility that you need in order to make the changes required.
Even if you have a local developer on hand that can make changes to your live set, it’s best to keep the staging site along with you.
The importance of a staging site
1. You’re able to test new functions that will be hidden temporarily from your users
As time progresses, one needs to make changes to their website whether it be changing the overall appearance to make it more attractive to visitors or contributing to UX/UI. It’s best to keep these changes away from your visitors before publishing it to the live site. One needs to thoroughly test the updated changes and has to be fully satisfied with it before going live.
2. Avoid downtime by making use of a staging website
A high uptime is a great contributor to your SEO metrics as well as for your visitors. A high uptime reflects the availability of your website to your visitors. A high uptime instils trustworthiness within your visitors and evokes a message that your website is well-maintained.
3. Falls part of the development process
If you’re working alongside a developer or simply dragging and dropping elements provided by WordPress, a staging site is extremely important. This stage of web development allows you to troubleshoot bugs and provides a better work flow during the process.
4. Contributes to your time management
If a staging site is implemented, a developer or the individual will have enough time to process any changes without feeling pressured into finishing due to the staging site acting as a ‘dummy’ or decoy.
5. Better project management techniques
The staging site acts as a buffer to allow other sub-projects to run in the background while the developer or the person responsible for making the changes can work on it current tasks at hand. This gives room to accommodate set backs or anything that might delay the project as a whole.