We are big fans of WP Engine. There are a lot of great reasons to use them for WordPress hosting – but one of the coolest services they offer is the ability to set up and use their staging area. Recently – we created a new theme and used the staging environment for all development. Since we loved it so much – we wanted to share on how to use it!

Staging Environments Made Easy

When we started the development – we simply went to our WP Admin area, clicked on one button “Copy from LIVE to STAGING” and within minutes – an email was sent letting us know it was all set up. All content, themes, plugins, settings – all the same as the live site. Since working with the live content, plugins, etc – is crucial for quality assurance – being able to do this in one simple step is a real time saver. We then were able to stage everything, adjust content, widgets, etc and then click on “Copy site from STAGING to LIVE” and viola – everything we changed was then in place on the live site.

Staging: Not Just For Theme Updates

While the staging environment was great for the new theme – it can also be extremely helpful for general content changes, plugin update testing, and general debugging. Want to test out a mobile theme or a new plugin? Click the staging button and test. If you like it – simply push your changes from staging to live with one click.

Thanks WP Engine for making this staging environment so simple! If you are a WP Engine user and have not used this feature – take a few minutes now and check it out.