When designing a website for your business, a staging site is an essential tool in the web design and development process.
A WordPress staging site provides a risk-free space to test new website designs, plugins, and features without affecting your live website.
In this post, we’ll cover the basics of a staging site and why they’re essential in the web design and development process.
What Is a Staging Site?
A staging site is a copy of your website that is used for testing design changes, updates, or new features. Setting up a staging site allows developers to experiment without affecting your live website.
In a staging site, you can test the look and feel of your site before it goes live. A staging site is only accessible to you and your web development team, providing a great place to experiment and fine-tune your website’s functionality.
Once you are happy with your staging site, you can push the changes to your production site (the live version of your website). This makes your website changes viewable for website visitors.
Benefits of Using A Staging Site
Staging websites provide many advantages in the web development process. Here are some benefits staging sites can provide:
Reduce Downtime
One of the biggest advantages of using a staging site is reducing downtime on your live site. For websites that generate a lot of website traffic, you can’t afford to have your site down for several weeks during the redesign process. This is where creating a staging site becomes essential.
A staging site guarantees continuous site functionality, allowing uninterrupted access to both the live and staging sites. By working in a staging environment, businesses can work with their development team to design their new website without impacting the experience of current website visitors.
The development team can push the new and improved website live when it’s ready, minimizing website downtime for everyone.
Find Errors and Issues
A staging site helps you find errors and issues before you push them to your existing site.
When you make changes in your staging site, you might encounter errors, issues, and bugs. These bugs could potentially impact your live website if they are not fixed. For example, a new plugin in the staging site might cause issues with an existing functionality on your live website.
Having a staging site allows you to find and fix errors like these before they are pushed live and discovered by website visitors. Working in a staging environment is the best way to find errors without compromising your live website.
Improved Workflow Efficiency
A WordPress staging environment streamlines the website development process.
Staging sites help developers test and preview new design ideas and features, making the development process smoother. It allows developers to experiment with different design layouts or functionality enhancements before implementing them on the live site. This also reduces the need for troubleshooting later.
WordPress staging sites play a crucial role in improving the development process, ensuring that projects are completed smoothly and efficiently.
Mobile-Friendly Testing
In a staging site, you can test your website’s responsiveness on various mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets. This includes testing both the layout and functionality of the mobile version of your site.
By using staging sites to test for mobile-responsiveness, you can ensure a positive viewing experience for mobile visitors. For example, you can check text readability, menu navigation, functionality of buttons and forms to ensure great user experience.
Improved Client Approval Process
Staging sites allow for a smooth review and approval process. They are an essential tool in improving collaboration between designers, developers, and business owners.
In a staging site, you can visualize how the proposed changes will look and function in a realistic environment. This allows clients to approve changes confidently, knowing that they have reviewed and provided feedback on the proposed updates before they go live.
Creating A New Website? A Staging Site Is Essential
Staging sites improve the creation of business websites, allowing developers to test and refine changes before they go live.
They offer a secure environment for testing changes and updates, reducing downtime and website errors and glitches. This guarantees continuous site functionality, allowing uninterrupted access to both the live and staging sites.
At Nine Isle, we always work on websites in a staging environment, allowing for an enhanced feedback process and minimal downtime and disruptions to your live site. Work with us on your WordPress website!