How To Create WP STAGING ENVIRONMENT

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Viewing 15 posts - 1 through 15 (of 15 total)
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  • #20305
    BAM
    Participant
    Here is some research I done today for creating a simple to use staging area for WPLMS. https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-staging/ This one looks pretty good and will probably try this out myself when I have next week. I am way behind on things right now. But will test before I do any more updates with this theme or plugins and will give some additional feedback later. https://wordpress.org/plugins/duplicator-clone/ This one looks ok but I like the first one much better and it has great ratings. https://wpstagecoach.com/ This option looks great but a little costly especially if your running a full blown SSL site like I am. I do not think they should have made SSL support that much more. https://wpengine.com/support/staging/ I have used this host before with some other clients and love the staging but they have a lot of restrictions on what plugins they allow. Not sure its a great fit for WPLMS  sites. http://www.instantwp.com/ This is a local option that you would have to setup on your local PC. I do not think this is best way because your not seeing all things as they are on your host. You also cannot have others from remote locations put a second set of eyes on your testing environment. IMO this is how most developers make so many mistakes. Please by all means add to the list of any plugins you know and any experience you have. Thanks....
    #20311
    haider717
    Spectator
    Thanks for this info, I will share the ones that saved me from the mess 2.0 created. Maybe it will help others too. I had free UpdraftPlus - Backup/Restore installed and it was setup to take backups each night to my dropbox. It will auto-backup to dropbox and It will keep two copies of your back up. Lets say you update today on 24, you can get your site  back to 23 or 22. If its styling issue than just restore theme or plugins not database so you don,t lose users. I also bought the addon - Migrater from the same company its about $30 but well worth it. I migrated and cloned another dev.sample.org and tried all 2.0 stuff. 2.0 works well when you have everything installed correctly. Now one thing is messed up and I need to figure that our before trying on production. I will make video since I am YouTuber and i Like to do this stuff :) Hope this help someone Yes i am angry but still the team is pretty good and they respond quickly, We also learn something from mistakes and we need to be prepared also from our end. Thanks, Dani
    #20314
    BAM
    Participant
    Dan, Thanks for sharing your feedback for myself and others. Let me ask you this. What did you do to create the dev site. Is that in a sub directory and where you able to lock out to search engines and others? Does the plugin have an easy way to set up the dev site. I am assuming that is what the migrator is.  
    #20321
    haider717
    Spectator
    Hi BAM, Go to Settings, Readings > check Search Engine Visibility- Discourage search engines from indexing this site I  have two hosting so i created my dev on bluehost and my main site is on site ground. when I got migrater addon, it came with free full plugin so i deleted the current one and re-uploaded it. I took a back up of my prod site in dropbox, I downloaded it and than I went to clean dev site. I installed the plugin(its unlimited license) and clicked on restore from local backup. It took 2 minutes and everything was same as prod. Now i spend almost 3 hours playing with 2.0 no worries :) Also install this plugin <h2>Coming Soon Page & Maintenance Mode by SeedProd</h2> This will display simple page to visitors (No login, No register or comments), If your logged in as admin you can see front pages. It makes it easy for you to play around and not worry about visitors checking your dev site. Thanks,  
    #20323
    haider717
    Spectator
    Only problem so far, After i upload modern theme i can,t see login. Hope support staff jump in help me out with this. Thanks,  
    #20340
    BAM
    Participant
    Thanks for the info. That is exactly what I want is an area to play before putting into production and I think everyone that wants to build a serious business should do the same. I have used the coming soon plugin your referring to. Although I will tell I have had some pages in the past get indexed some how that way. It may be even better to password protect the directory. Is your dev site in the same root folder as the main site? I suppose it may also be    
    #20345
    haider717
    Spectator
    No Its  a different hosting server, This hosting server is for testing as i don,t want my main site to slow down or add up database and file counts. Hosting companies don,t like this when you have too many files.. so one cheap plan on other server is a good way to test things. In my case - Production on siteground Testing exact copy of production on bluehost. Thanks  
    #20350
    BAM
    Participant
    My server host is plenty good enough for both. Have other sites on server. Very powerful host. Not a cheap host.
    #20351
    haider717
    Spectator
    One day I will get powerful one day maybe when I have 50k users lol
    #20355
    BAM
    Participant
    Ha ha actually the only way to get to that kind of traffic is to have the right kind of host. Reason being is that server needs to be able to not only handle traffic as its building but all the search bots indexing pages at same time. If it can't then you will not be able to grow. Let me ask you this so this plugin I can create in a sub directory correct instead of a different domain correct?
    #20359
    haider717
    Spectator
    You are right I am taking slow steps because right now my members are coming from YouTube. Its growing and I am slowly making it to the bigger servers. Yes you can create sub domain on the same server, Install fresh wordpress and install this plug in. If your not sure about buying the addon, try the free plugin which does the backup and restore. This will be a good test before even buying the addon. Once you know it works, I would go for migrater For me it worked pretty well
    #20360
    haider717
    Spectator
    It should look like this /public_html/Productionsite (abc.org) Install plugin here, Take full backup /public_html/devsite (dev.abc.org) Install pluhin here, restore from the pro backup *Warning don,t try to restore database, its where you need the add-on or else you won,t be able to access your dev site. Unless your good with mysql.  
    #20363
    BAM
    Participant
    In my case the production would be here because I already have /public_html/ the site live in the /public_html/ ALL wordpress files here in root Then my dev site would be as you said here /public_html/devsite Perhaps just password protect that folder and exclude in Robots.txt file so search bots will not look in. Another reason why I say password protect is because not all bots will listen to how you have set things. Then if the content ends up out there indexed some place its a mess. Another reason I wonder if its possible to have like a sub folder way is because many plugins I have operate under site domain license. Some will not even work outside that domain. This is brand new site I am working on for Coaching I'm working on and have a lot of work to do still to build traffic. But I have to get past getting slowed down on all these technical problems so I can focus on marketing. However I have build very large scale 20K plus visitors a day sites before. Learning WP also more and more each day. As I am trying to not to have totally custom sites anymore. Dev's will drive you crazy going that way and what I like about WP very slow painful expensive process when you go fully custom. This is also second half of life project for me and means more than just money. It has special purpose for me. The database restore challenge your talking about is solved with that migration plugin correct?
    #20516
    247webmaster
    Spectator
    Hey Guys - some great input here - will be sure to try your variations. We have been using these to stage to another dev host or on our VPS.  Makes synchronising a dream. https://github.com/wp-sync-db/wp-sync-db https://github.com/wp-sync-db/wp-sync-db-media-files We live in a multisite world for  a number of our clients so so it gets a bit tricky with staging. Here's a plugin worth looking at: https://premium.wpmudev.org/project/cloner/    
    #21255
    dtconner
    Spectator
    I too have used the UpdraftPlus with the Migrator add-on.  I have the fortune of my clients are each using a VPS which makes it easy to create a separate cPanel account and fresh install of WP (and it's own DB) to setup a dev/staging environment.  I then migration a current version of the live site to the dev site for update testing and etc... When I am ready to push live the UpDraftPlus plugin is fairly painless to move all files and DB to the production site.
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