WP Staging

Plugin updates and theme customizations should be tested on a staging / backup platform before applying them on the production website.
Usually, it’s recommended having the staging / backup platform on an identical server like the production server. You can only catch all possible errors during testing with the same hardware and software environment for your test & backup website.

So, before you update a plugin or install a new one, it is highly recommended to check out the modifications on a clone / backup of your production website.
That ensures that any modifications work on your production website without throwing unexpected errors or preventing your site from loading, better known as the “WordPress blank page error.”

Testing a plugin update before installing it in a production environment isn’t done very often by most users because existing staging solutions are too complex and need a lot of time to create a
an up-to-date copy of your website.

You could be afraid of installing plugins updates because you follow “never touch a running system.” You know that untested updates increase the risk of breaking your site.

That’s is one of the main reasons WordPress installations are often outdated, not updated at all, and insecure because of this non-update behavior.

It’s time to change this, so there is no easier way than using “WP STAGING” for cloning, backup, and migration of your WordPress website.

Install WP STAGING backup via the admin dashboard. Go to ‘Plugins’, click ‘Add New’ and search the plugins for ‘WP STAGING’. Install the plugin with ‘Install Now’.
After installation, go to WP STAGING > Staging Sites and create your first staging / backup site

Even though you can use WP STAGING for backup purposes, the free version is not a usual backup plugin per the general definition. WP STAGING creates a clone of your entire website, which you can immediately use for developing and testing.
You can even use it as some kind of backup in case something happens to your production site, but only the WP STAGING | PRO pro version allows you to download the backup to your local computer. There are many other popular backup plugins out there. Still, our goal is to bring the reliability and performance of a backup plugin to a new level.

So instead of offering our backup feature free of charge, we think it’s time to provide a full-fledged premium backup solution with enterprise code quality affordable for everyone.

Video: How we run automated tests on WP STAGING

Note: WP STAGING | PRO provides more advanced backup functionality compared with the below-mentioned backup plugins. The speed and Performance of WP STAGING’s backup feature often exceed even the most prominent and most well-established backup plugins.

We are now adding more advanced backup features to deliver what other existing backup plugins are still missing.

You may have heard about other popular backup plugins like All in one Migration, BackWPUp, BackupWordPress, Simple Backup, WordPress Backup to Dropbox, or similar WordPress backup plugins and now wonder about the difference between WP STAGING and those backup tools.

Other backup plugins usually create a backup of your WordPress filesystem and a database backup that you can use to restore your website if it becomes corrupted or you want to go back in time to a previous state.

The backup files are compressed and can not be executed directly. WP STAGING, on the other hand, creates a full backup of the whole file system and the database in a working state that you can open like your original production website.

Even though WP STAGING’s basic version comes with some backup capabilities, its main purpose is to create a clone of your website, which you can work on. It harmonies very well with all the mentioned backup plugins above. If you go with the WP STAGING | PRO version, you will get the backup functionality of the mentioned above backup plugins.

Note, that some free backup plugins are not able to support custom tables. (For instance, the free version of Updraft plus backup plugin). In that case, your backup plugin is not able to create a backup of your staging site when it is executed on the production site.
The reason is that the tables created by WP STAGING are custom tables beginning with another table prefix.
To bypass this limitation and to be able to create a backup of your staging site, you can set up your backup plugin on the staging site and create the backup from that location. That works well with every available WordPress backup plugin.

If you want to migrate your local website to an already existing production site, you can use our pro version WP STAGING | PRO or a tool like WP Migrate DB that copies only the database.
WP STAGING is intended to create a staging site with the latest data from your production site or create a backup of it.

We like the Duplicator plugin. Even though Duplicator is not as fast as WP STAGING for creating a backup, it’s still is a great tool for migrating from a development site to production one or from production site to development one. Overall it’s a good tool to create a backup of your WordPress website.
The downside is that before you can even create an export or backup file with Duplicator, a lot of adjustments, manual interventions, and requirements are needed before you can start the backup process.
The backup plugin Duplicator also needs some skills to be able to create a backup and development/staging site. In contrast, WP STAGING does not need more than a click from you to create a backup or staging site.
Duplicator is best placed to be a tool for the first-time creation of your production site. That is something where it is convenient and powerful.

If you have created a local or web-hosted development site and you need to migrate that site the first time to your production domain, you do nothing wrong by using
the Duplicator plugin! If you need all your latest production data like posts, updated plugins, theme data, and styles in a testing environment or want to create a quick backup before testing out something, then we recommend using WP STAGING instead!

If speed, performance, and code quality are a matter for you as well, give WP STAGING a try.

If you are using a security plugin like Wordfence, iThemes Security, All In One WP Security & Firewall, or a plugin that hides the WordPress default login URL, make sure that you have installed the latest version of WP STAGING to access your cloned backup site.
Suppose you can still not log in to your staging / backup site. In that case, you can go to WP STAGING > settings and disable there the WP STAGING extra authentication. Your admin dashboard will still be protected and not accessible to public users.

Permalinks are disabled on the staging / backup site after first time cloning / backup creation
Read here how to activate permalinks on the staging site.

The pro version of WP STAGING can backup your whole WordPress website. (In the future, we are implementing a basic free version of our sophisticated backup feature into this free version as well)
With this backup function, you can backup and copy your entire WordPress website to another domain, new host, or new server very easily, and often faster and more reliable than with any other existing backup plugins.
Have a look at [https://wp-staging.com/docs/how-to-migrate-your-wordpress-site-to-a-new-host/](this article), that introduces the backup feature.

We have translated WP STAGING into five languages nearly completely:

English: WP STAGING Backup & Duplicator WordPress Plugin. Backup & Migrate WordPress websites.
French: Plugin WordPress de sauvegarde et de duplication WP STAGING. Sauvegarder et migrer les sites Web WordPress.
German: WP STAGING Backup & Duplicator WordPress Plugin. Migrate WordPress Webseiten.
Spanish: WP STAGING Complemento de copia de seguridad y duplicador de WordPress. Copia de seguridad y migración de sitios web de WordPress.

The following languages have been partially translated. You can help us with the translation:

Croatian: WP STAGING Backup & Duplicator WordPress dodatak. Izradite sigurnosnu kopiju i migrirajte WordPress web stranice.
Dutch: WP STAGING Back-up & Duplicator WordPress-plug-in. Back-up en migratie van WordPress-websites.
Finnish: WP STAGING Backup & Duplicator WordPress-laajennus. Varmuuskopioi ja siirrä WordPress-verkkosivustoja.
Greek: WP STAGING Πρόσθετο WordPress Backup & Duplicator. Δημιουργία αντιγράφων ασφαλείας και μετεγκατάσταση ιστοσελίδων WordPress.
Hungarian: WP STAGING Backup & Duplicator WordPress beépülő modul. WordPress-webhelyek biztonsági mentése és migrálása.
Indonesian: WP Staging Backup & Duplikator Plugin WordPress. Cadangkan & Migrasi situs web WordPress.
Italian: WP STAGING Plugin WordPress per backup e duplicatori. Backup e migrazione di siti Web WordPress.
Persian: WP STAGING پشتیبان گیری و افزونه وردپرس Duplicator. پشتیبان گیری و مهاجرت از وب سایت های وردپرسی.
Polish: WP STAGING Wtyczka WordPress do tworzenia kopii zapasowych i powielania. Twórz kopie zapasowe i migruj witryny WordPress.
Portuguese (Brazil): WP STAGING Backup & Duplicador Plugin WordPress. Backup e migração de sites WordPress.
Russian: Плагин WP STAGING Backup & Duplicator для WordPress. Резервное копирование и перенос сайтов WordPress.
Turkish: WP STAGING Yedekleme ve Çoğaltıcı WordPress Eklentisi. WordPress web sitelerini yedekleyin ve taşıyın.
Vietnamese: WP STAGING Backup & Duplicator WordPress Plugin. Sao lưu và di chuyển các trang web WordPress.

This plugin has been created in thousands of hours and works even with the smallest shared web hosting package.
We also use an enterprise-level approved testing coding environment to ensure that the cloning and backup process runs rock-solid on your system.
If you are a developer, you will probably like to hear that we use Codeception and PHPUnit for our backup software.

As there are infinite variations of possible server constellations, it still can happen that something does not work for you 100%. In that case,
please open a support request and describe your issue.

Screenshots:

1. 

   Create new WordPress staging / backup site

2. 

   Select name for staging / backup site

3. 

   Select folders to include in staging / backup site

4. 

   Cloning / backup processing

5. 

   Listed staging / backup sites

6. 

   Listed staging / backup sites

7. 

   Open, edit & delete staging / backup sites

8. 

   Login to staging / backup site

Other notes:

Latest Change log entry:

• New: Allow the usage of wildcards characters in the push filter ‘wpstg_preserved_options’. #2546
• New: Exclude multiple database values from copying to a staging site table through the ‘wpstg.cloning.database.queryRows’ filter. #2545
• New: You can add the new constant WPSTAGING_DEV_SITE into wp-config.php that determines if site is a staging/dev site or regular one. #2556
• Fix: Cannot upload single backup files larger than 25GB on SFTP Storage. #2539
• Enh: Removed console logs and clean up code. #2561
• Enh: Rename logfile to wpstg-bundled-logs.txt while downloading and sending report to support team. #2593
• Enh: Improve admin notice if cron jobs do not work. #2723
• Fix: Fatal error due to foreign key constraints on tmp or bak tables when cleaning WP Staging tmp and bak tables before Pushing a staging site to live. #2728
• Fix: Fatal error during backup restore if site has a drop in plugin like db.php or object-cache.php due to incorrect checking the checksum of the drop in plugin file. #2715
• Fix: Add new constant WPSTG_MEMORY_EXHAUST_FIX, that can prevent memory exhausted errors during backup creation. #2551
• Fix: A custom UPLOADS folder outside wp-content was not pre-selected and copied during cloning process and tustom UPLOADS folder was not copied during pushing a staging site as well. #2736
• Fix: Improve admin notice when a pro backup is restored with the free version on another domain, host or server. #2697
• Tweak: Adjust the requirements for restoring backup by making it dependant on backup structure instead of plugin version. #2717
• Dev: Bump AWS PHP SDK package to latest version #2295
• Dev: Remove PHP 5.6 compatibility code #2714
• Dev: Reduce file size of the free plugin by removing unused backup cloud storages libraries from vendor packages. #2710
• Dev: Add e2e tests for admin notices for backup and staging #2652
• Dev: Delete tests output dir content while running make reset and ./wpstg build:webdriver-rebuild-dist #2726

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