Create a WordPress Staging Site Print

How to Create a WordPress Staging Site

Create a Staging Site for WordPress with Installatron.

What is a Staging Site?

A WordPress Staging Site, also referred to as a Development Site, is a a copy of an existing WordPress website. The Staging Site using a alternative URL, can be updated and the changes reviewed before synchronizing the Staging Site with the live or production site.

Prerequisites:

The following elements must be in place before the process can begin:

• An existing Installatron instance of the WordPress application to create a Staging Site for.
• An existing DNS record for your Staging Site URL; i.e., dev.your-domainname.com
• An existing domain for the Staging Site URL in cPanel; i.e., dev.your-domainname.com

Create a Staging Website

1. In cPanel, navigate to: Domains > Domains

   Choose "Create a New Domain," and add your new: dev.your-domainname.com

2. Add SSL to the new Staging Site URL before proceeding.

   Note: It may take a small interval for SSL to generate for a new domain.

3. Navigate to: Software > Installatron
4. If you have not already installed or imported your WordPress website do so now.
5. To clone your existing website, click on the "Clone" icon to the right.

6. Select the domain of your new Staging Site. The drop-down list contains all domains and sub-domains known to be associated with your web hosting control panel login.

   Note: If the domain you want to install on isn't listed, you'll need to add the domain under the Domains section in cPanel.

7. Directory (Optional)

   Enter an optional directory. The directory will be added to the selected domain to determine the destination for the application.
   
   Leave this field empty if you wish to clone into the "root" (or home directory, or top-level directory) of the domain.

8. Create a Staging site?

   Check the box next to: "Yes, the cloned installation will be a used for development and testing purposes, with the ability to sync changes with the live installation."

9. Choose Database Management options. Choose options as desired. Recommended: Automatically create a new database for the installed application.
10. Setting Management. Choose options as desired.
11. Click on Create to create your WordPress Staging Site.

You now have a WordPress Staging Site. Your login credentials for your Staging Site will be the same as for the live or production site.

Post Staging Site Creation Steps

Prevent Search Engine Indexing of your Staging Site

We recommend taking steps to prevent the indexing of your new Staging Site by search engines. Here are three recommendations:

• Create a robots.txt

  1. Access the files for your website via the cPanel File Manager and navigate to your web root folder.
  2. Create a file and name it robots.txt
  3. Edit the file and add the following text:
     
     

     User-agent: *
     Disallow: /

  For more information about robots.txt visit here:

  http://www.robotstxt.org/robotstxt.html

• Login to WordPress and navigate to:

  Settings > Reading

  Find and enable the Search engine visibility option.

  This option will discourage search engines from indexing the Staging Site but there is no guarantee.

• We also recommend the following plugin:
  
  
  • https://underconstructionpage.com/