A staging site is a separate copy of your website where you can test changes safely before pushing them to the live site. Webfort supports WordPress staging directly from the control panel.
Creating a Staging Site
- Log in to the Webfort control panel and go to Websites.
- Select your live WordPress site.
- Click Staging in the top navigation.
- Click Create Staging Site.
- Wait for the clone to complete — this usually takes a minute or two depending on site size.
Your staging site will be available at a temporary URL shown in the control panel. It's automatically protected so search engines won't index it.
Pushing Staging to Live
Once you've tested your changes:
- Go back to the Staging section.
- Click Push to Live.
- Choose whether to push files, the database, or both.
- Confirm.
A backup of your live site is taken automatically before the push, so you can roll back if needed.
Best Practices
- Always test plugin and theme updates on staging first.
- Delete the staging site when you're finished to free up disk space.
- Avoid making changes on both live and staging at the same time — a push will overwrite one with the other.
Troubleshooting
If your staging site shows "Error Establishing a Database Connection", see WordPress Staging Site: Error Establishing a Database Connection.
