When you’re about to make a major change to your website, your first step should be to go to your staging site and test it first. If you’re trying to update your WordPress theme and you’re afraid you’ll lose some customizations you’ve made, or you want to make sure a plugin won’t crash your website, a staging site will provide you with a safe environment where you can try things out.
There are several ways to set up a staging site and using plugins is one of them. In this article, we will show you the seven best staging plugins for WordPress. Our list includes:
There are more than a few scenarios where you might find yourself in need. Blog Vault. It is one of the best known WordPress plugins when it comes to backing up and restoring websites. BlogVault is also useful for site migrations and of course gives you access to a staging environment.
BlogVault’s staging functionality is great for several reasons. for one person, takes place offsite on BlogVault’s servers. It’s easy to set up regardless of the hosting service you’re using and offers easy merging with your live website. you can even Choose whether you want to merge specific changes or the full staging site.
Provisioning is a core feature of BlogVault and you can use it for free. Starting at just over $7 per month as long as you subscribe to BlogVault.
Staying with the most popular backup plugins that can also offer staging, UpdraftPlus and its updraft clone service. The core UpdraftPlus plugin is free to use and offers great backup and restore capabilities. It is also a must if you want to use Updraft Clone to create a clone of your website.
With Updraft Clone, you can create an exact copy of your website from UpdraftPlus right then and there. The staging website will be temporarily stored in multiple data centers – You will be able to choose the region where your clone website will be hosted.. Updraft uses encryption to keep your data safe in transit and storage, and It provides an easy way to migrate your clone to the live version of the website.
Updraft Clone is a paid, coin-based service. Creating a clone for 24 hours costs a single coin. From then on, every extra week of the clone’s life costs an extra coin. Tokens start at $15 for a pack of five.
Sometimes you don’t want a plugin to take your data and host it on its server or in a remote datacenter. There are more than a few good reasons for wanting to use a plugin like WP Stagingwhich allows you keep all your valuable data right there on your server, over which you can have full control.
WP Staging will create a clone of your website and place it in a subfolder on your website. The plugin will quickly create the clone without causing a server timeout to minimize downtime. Only website administrators will be able to access the clone and it will be kept away from search engines to avoid potential problems. Finally, The staging site will have an orange admin bar so you should have no trouble understanding that you are working on the staging site and not the live site.
The basic features of the plugin are free to use. You can access additional features if you choose the Pro version of the plugin, which starts at $106 for lifetime use on a single website. These include using a private directory for cloning, making the clone available via a subdomain, multisite support, and submit and move.
Many staging plugins are backup plugins that offer staging as an additional service. WP Stagecoachon the other hand, it is a pure staging plugin. It was created for the sole purpose of making and editing copies of your website securely and then choosing which changes you want to push to the live website.
The biggest selling point of this plugin is that it lets you defragment databases. This is ideal if your live website has made significant changes to the database while working on the staging site. The world won’t stop shopping at your store while you’re testing a new plugin, and WP Stagecoach understands that.
As for the other features you get for the $99/year starting price, they include exactly what you need from a staging plugin. It’s easy to use, creates password-protected copies of your website and lets you import individual files, databases, or both.
One of the biggest reasons people consider using WP Time Capsule is the plugin’s ability to detect and back up changes made to only one website. However, if you want more than highly targeted, real-time backups, you can use WP Time Capsule for its staging and cloning capabilities.
WP Time Capsule allows you to create clones of your website with the push of a button. You can use a clone of your website to test updates, restore previous versions of the website, or test any other changes you want to make to it. You can easily copy the changes to your live website or use the clone to migrate the website.
The plugin is available for a free 30-day trial. After the trial has passed, You must sign up for an annual subscription starting at $49 or choose to purchase the add-on for $149 for two installs.
Another versatile backup plugin, WPVivid Backup Plugin it doubles as a migration helper and of course a staging site builder. With the plugin, you can quickly and easily create a clone of your website, then use it to test anything you fear might break your live website.
The WPVivid Backup plugin is packed with useful staging features. Allowing you to easily create multiple staging websites, cover the basics and push changes to life with a single button. It extends them with multi-site support, selective transfer options, and the ability to update the staging site using data from the live website.
You will be able to try all these features for free for two weeks. Subscription for the entire addon starts at $49 per year.
Let’s wrap it up!
If you want to play it safe while testing a new update for WordPress, important plugins, or your WordPress theme, you always install the update on a staging site first to make sure it’s safe to apply to your live website. You may have other reasons to look for staging plugins for WordPress, but either way, any of these six plugins will likely get the job done.
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