Why You Need a Staging Website for Your Membership Campaign
One of the reasons WordPress is a great choice for your membership website is the variety of themes and plugins this software provides and all the options for customizing 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 improvements to your website with a new plugin, theme or a custom-written codes on your website.
It only takes just a few clicks alter the appearance of your website, incorporate additional features or alter your site in some other way, why not experiment with a few ideas?
But there's a problem. Despite the relative ease with which we can create a variety of changes to our WordPress websites, these modifications may have unexpected consequences for users may not like.
In this piece we'll discuss how you can work on your WordPress site while not affecting the experience for users which is crucial in the case of paying users.
What a Staging Site is and why you need one
As mentioned, if you experiment with different themes, download new plugins, or just tweak the widgets or menus of WordPress it is possible to expose your website to risk.
Take a look at what a user might think about If the design of your website suddenly changes, a feature stops functioning, or the whole website becomes unavailable.
They'll at best think twice about entering their personal details; at worst the site will be abandoned and never return.
They could be able to inform others about their frustrations with your site.
The above scenarios can happen when you begin to alter the core elements of your site. That's why that you utilize a staging website or development environment for testing any modifications you're planning to implement to your site.
As a membership-site owner It's more crucial to not make changes to the live website and create a copy of your web page that only your staff and you are able to access.
Your staging area is a secure place in which you can do what you want without:
- Frustrating existing members
- Attracting new visitors
- The loss of data includes customer transactions.
Once you're sure that your changes haven't caused any problems, you'll be able to transfer them to the live version of your website.
Sound good? Read on to find out how to create a staging site for your WordPress membership website.
Check with Your Web Host
One benefit to choosing a hosting platform that is currently powering more than 30% of websites is the fact that there are a variety of WordPress-optimized web hosting services available.
One of the functions that are available to the WordPress web hosts, including the cheapest entry-level plans, is the ability to create quickly a test site or staging area that is based off your current site.
The most effective staging-site solutions that web hosts offer let you easily set up an exclusive test zone and then push the test site version of your site to the live hosting system.
Because of this, it's possible to go as long as you want and be as thorough as you want when trying the new configuration of your site. When you're done for it, you'll be able to make the modifications available to your visitors and members in just several clicks.
In any case, using a staging site helps to avoid problems which can arise when you use your live website for testing as well as development.
Find a Suitable WordPress Staging WordPress Plugin
In selecting a WordPress plugin for setting up the staging version of your site, you can choose between two choices:
- a plug-in designed for this purpose.
- a general-purpose web-duplication plug-in.
Let's 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 the options available are limited because there aren't many plugins like this available.
Plus, you usually do not have the same control over the procedure and final result like you do when using plugins that are more general-purpose for site copying.
A second alternative, a general-purpose site-duplication plugin will give you greater control over the entire procedure.
The best plugins in this category permit you to copy certain elements of your website, for instance, the database or your content. They also give you more options for where the staging site is located, including the local WordPress installation or a private subdomain.
Though many of the most effective WordPress website-duplication plugins are cost-free, they're not always as user-friendly as professional staging-site software.
- WP Stagecoach - a commercial one-click staging-site-creation WordPress plugin with lots of useful features.
- WordPress Staging is a work-in-progress free WordPress web-based staging and cloning plugin.
- Duplicator - a powerful but more difficult WordPress website-duplication plugin.
You can see that when you're willing to pay for a premium plugin, the process is a lot simpler. However, while some of the free alternatives may take some work, they're certainly suitable tools to create an WordPress membership-staging site.
Final thoughts
Hopefully you now understand the benefits of having an environment to stage your WordPress membership website.
There's no reason to not do cowboy coding on a small personal website, however when you're running a professional membership site, you have a greater responsibility to take care of the members of your site, no matter if they pay for access or otherwise.
How will you create an online staging area to host your membership site? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.