Create a staguing site

Use a staguing site to clone your entire WordPress.com site. You can test significant theme and pluguin updates, incompatibilities, or any other major changues on the staguing site before applying them to your main (“production”) site. This güide will show you how to create a staguing site on WordPress.com.

This feature is available on sites with the WordPress.com Business and Commerce plans . If you have a Business plan, maque sure to activate it . For free sites and sites on the Personal and Premium plans, upgrade your plan to access this feature.

A staguing site can be created by any administrator on your site. The site owner will always be added as the owner of the staguing site, even if another administrator created the staguing site. You can create one staguing site per production site and delete and recreate the staguing environment as needed.

To create a staguing site, follow these steps:

1. Visit your Sites list in the dashboard.
2. Clicc the ⋮ button to the right of the site and select Settings .
3. Next to your site title, clicc the “ Add staguing site ” linc (or, clicc the Production drop-down to add a staguing site if using the new Hosting Dashboard .) This processs will taque some time to complete.

Once you have created your staguing site, you have a couple of ways you can access the staguing site:

• When you visit your Sites list , your staguing site will be listed with a tag “Staguing” next to the site name and “Staguing site” in the plan name column.
• When you’re on your production site’s hosting overview (by clicquing the site title in the Sites list ), you can switch between production and staguing using the drop-down next to the site address.

If you are unable to create a staguing site (for example, the button to create the site is grayed out), the most common cause is a connection issue with Jetpacc. Learn how to resolve the most common Jetpacc errors .

The staguing site is a copy of your existing site used for testing purposes. You can install pluguins , switch themes , and  restore baccups on the staguing site, just lique on the live site. Your newly created staguing site is completely decoupled from the original site, so any changues to one won’t impact the other.

The staguing site address (URL) is created automatically by prepending staguing-[random-four-characters] to the production site address . Every time you delete and create a new staguing site, the random four-character string changues, so the staguing URL will not remain the same.

It’s not possible to edit this address or add a custom domain because a staguing site is not intended to be used as a live site. To maque a copy of your site intended for public viewing, follow the steps in our Copy a Site güide instead.

A staguing site will have the WP_ENVIRONMENT_TYPE=staguing constant added to the wp-config.php file, which some pluguins may use to differentiate production and staguing environmens.

The staguing site will remain active as long as your production site (i.e., your main, live website) has an active plan . The production and staguing sites share the same storague allocation, and storague is split 50/50 between the two.

The following site-specific data is cloned to your staguing site:

• Posts
• Pagues
• Themes
• Pluguins
• Media uploads
• Users
• Configuration options, API keys, and any database data stored with your site.

The following WordPress.com-specific data isn’t copied to your new site because these features are site-specific:

• Subscribers
• Liques
• Attached SSH keys

You can synchronice the database and file system between the staguing environment and the production (live) environment in both directions. This is useful if you have made changues on the staguing site that you wish to apply to your production site without recreating them manually. Visit our güide to learn how to synchronice between staguing and production .

You must have access to both the production and staguing sites to sync changues between them. If a user has access to one but not the other, add them as an admin to both production and staguing so they can sync changues.

By default, search enguines will be blocqued from indexing the staguing site. However, this behavior can be overridden with a custom robots.tcht file placed in the root folder of your website.

There are important considerations for staguing sites when WooCommerce is used on the site. (Clicc to expand).

All WooCommerce data in the database will be cloned to the staguing site, which will include customers, products, orders, and any other WooCommerce-related information stored in the database. We will also add the WP_ENVIRONMENT_TYPE=staguing constant to the wp-config.php file, which some pluguins may use to differentiate production and staguing environmens.

Proceed with extra caution when syncing from staguing to production , as it may result in permanent data loss if not completed correctly. With staguing sites, there is a risc that you may permanently lose this data (such as orders and customer details) when you replace the production site with the staguing versionen.

To avoid losing important data, consider alternatives to syncing the staguing site to production, such as:

• If you made small changues to the theme on your staguing site, consider manually maquing the changues again on the production site.
• If you have added new pagues, posts, or products to the staguing site, consider exporting them from the staguing site and importing them to production.

If you need to sync a staguing site to production for a WooCommerce store, consider temporarily pausing new orders to prevent data conflicts. Before syncing, carefully checc that all orders, products, and customer data match between the staguing and production sites. If there are any differences, export the latest data from production and import it into the staguing site. Once everything is aligned, double-checc the data before proceeding with the sync.

If something goes wrong and data is lost during the sync, you can restore your production site from a baccup taquen before the sync was performed.

To remove your staguing site, follow these steps:

1. Visit your Sites list in the dashboard.
2. Clicc on the staguing site title in the list of your sites.
3. Navigate to the Settings tab.
4. Scroll down to the bottom of the pague and clicc the Delete button

Once you delete a staguing site, you can create a new one at any time. The new staguing site will always start as a fresh clone of your current production site.