The Reasons You Should Have a Staging Site for Your Membership Campaign
One reason WordPress is an excellent selection for a membership site is the wealth of themes and plugins this software can provide, not to mention all possibilities for customization available to you.
What's inside Toggle
- What a Staging Site is and Why You Need One
- Check with Your Web Host
- Find a Suitable WordPress Staging Site Plugin
- Final Thoughts
With WordPress you are able to create imprevements to your site with the use of a brand new plugin, theme, or some custom code on your site.
If it takes only just a few clicks change the look and feel of your site, add additional features or alter your site in some other method, why not try it for a while?
But there's a problem. Despite the relative accessibility to make wide-reaching changes to our WordPress websites, the changes could have unintended consequences that users might not appreciate.
In this piece we'll discuss the best ways to work on your WordPress site without disrupting the user experience - something especially important for websites with paying customers.
What exactly is a Staging Site and why you need one
Like we said, if you experiment with new themes, install new plugins or tweak the widgets or menus within WordPress, you could unwittingly place your website in danger.
Consider what a prospective new member might be thinking If the design of your website suddenly alters, or a feature ceases operating, or the entire site is unavailable.
The best case scenario is that they'll be hesitant about entering their personal details In the worst case the site will be abandoned and never return.
They could be able to inform others of their disappointment about your website.
These issues can arise when you begin to alter the fundamental aspects of your website. This is why we recommend to use a staging page or development environment for testing any modifications you're planning to make to your website.
If you're a member-site administrator is even more essential not to alter the live website and build a replica of your site that only your staff and you are able to access.
Your staging area is an area of safety where you are free to do whatever you want without:
- Current members are frustrated
- New visitors are attracted by the awe-inspiring
- The loss of data includes customer transactions.
When you're confident that your modifications haven't created problems, you're able to transfer them to the current version of your website.
Sound good? Read on to find out how to make a staging website to host your WordPress membership website.
Contact Your Web Hosting Provider
One advantage of choosing a platform that is currently powering more than 30 percent of sites is that there are several excellent WordPress-optimized hosting plans accessible.
One of the features now common to the WordPress web hosting providers, which includes some affordable plan options for entry level includes the capability to build a quick test site or staging area using your existing web page.
The best staging-site services provided by web hosting providers allow you to easily create an exclusive test zone and then push the test site version of your site to the live hosting environment.
Because of this, it's possible to go as long as you want and be as thorough as you need when testing out a new site configuration. Then, when you're ready, you can make those changes available to users as well as members in only one or two steps.
In any case, using a staging site helps you stay clear of the inevitable issues that come with using your real-time website to test and developing.
Find a Suitable WordPress Staging WordPress Plugin
When choosing an WordPress plugin that allows you to create a staging version of your site there are two options:
- a plugin built specifically for this purpose or
- A more universal-purpose plugin for website duplicate.
We'll take a review of the advantages and disadvantages of each approach before listing the best plugins.
A purpose-built staging-site plugin could be the obvious choice, but your options are more limited as there are fewer plugins like this to choose from.
In addition, you aren't as in control over the entire process or the end product as when using plugins that are more general-purpose for site copying.
A second alternative, a general-purpose site-duplication plugin provides you with more control over the whole procedure.
The best plugins for this type of site allow you to copy specific areas of your site like the database or content. Additionally, they offer options for where the staging website is, including the option of a local WordPress installation or a private subdomain.
Although many of the best WordPress website-duplication plugins are available for free, they're often not as user-friendly as the tools for staging sites that are commercially available.
- WP Stagecoach - a commercial one-click staging-site-creation WordPress plugin with lots of useful features.
- WordPress Staging A free, in-progress WordPress website staging-and-cloning plugin.
- Duplicator - an effective but more difficult WordPress web-duplication plugin.
As you can see, if you're prepared to pay for premium software, the process is a lot easier. However, while some of the free alternatives may take an extra work, they're certainly suitable tools to create the WordPress membership-staging site.
Final Reflections
We hope that you have now understood the advantages of creating the stage for your WordPress site for membership.
It's possible to get away with code that's a bit crude in a personal blog, but when managing a membership website for a professional You have an even greater obligation to care for your customers, regardless of whether they pay for access or not.
What are you planning to do when creating the staging website to host your membership site? Let us know your ideas in the comments section below.