Cómo crear fácilmente un sitio de pruebas para WordPress (paso a paso)

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1. Lynda Joy

   Hi,

   I just did the first five or so steps of this, and then got lost at “upload your Wordpress content to. So now I have completely messed up my site and I would like to know how to undo what I have done.

   Thanks.
   – Lynda

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2. Rachel

   Thanks so much for this – I am very much a beginner but trying to figure out how to do these things myself so I can launch a new design by first using a test site in order to get it right. I have managed to follow your instructions perfectly until this part:

   “After copying your database, you need to copy your WordPress files, plugins, themes, and uploads. First download a fresh copy of WordPress from WordPress.org. Upload the contents of WordPress to your staging site. Note, do not run the WordPress install yet”

   Can you please advise as to how this is done or direct me to another instruction article? I can’t seem to find out how to do it otherwise. Many many thanks in advance

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3. Sanket D.

   So I’ve managed to create my staging environment successfully — I’ve all my media, themes, plugins, everything else properly transferred. However, I’d made some changes to my theme (not through any codes, but through the theme’s inbuilt settings — basic stuff like a custom logo (which I can see in my media library), theme color, homepage layout, etc. These changes are the only thing that for some reason are missing from my staging site. Anybody knows why this might be?

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   • byberkan

     I’m hoping you can find the solution. Same problem exists for me.

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4. Joe

   It seems we have to do the steps in here after we have our theme, plugin etc.

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5. Mark Park

   Great article! Just one thing that isn’t clear to me.

   If I have the current non-wordpress website on a domain name example.com and I want to build a new website using Wordpress and develop it on a staging environment on a sub-domain dev.example.com – is this possible?
   Can I make a sub-domain dev.example.com and install WP on the same server used by the current non-WP website?
   Later when the website is finished I want to connect my WP developed site with the domain name example.com.

   Thank you for your help.

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   • WPBeginner Support

     Yes this is possible. Make sure you block search engines on your development subdomain.

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     Administrador

     • Maria

       Thanks for a Very helpful article! I am in a similar situation as Mark, however my current website is a Wordpress site. Can I still develop the redesigned website on a staging site within a sub domain? And if so do I have to create a new database?

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       • byberkan

         You really didn’t read the article, do you?

6. Benito

   Hello, great article, but what if I don’t want to use XAMPP, and I just want to use a subdomain as a staging site and then push changes to live? What would be the best way to deploy the changes?

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7. Raj

   Will this process create a Database User and add it to the database we created while copying giving it all privileges by itself? or do we need to create a database user at some point?

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   • Raj

     Okay I tried it.. both ways.
     Once I created the database user before installing wordpress on the staging site and it worked. The other time around, I didn’t and got the issue “We were able to connect to the database server (which means your username and password is okay) but not able to select the a*******_ata_d2db database.”

     That to me means that one has to create a user manually, only copying database won’t do. Right?

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     • Sanny

       Raj, I see the same error (“Can’t select database”). How did you fix it ?

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     • Scott

       Hopefully you guys figured this out, but just to leave this here for others to find, you do indeed need to create a database user (which is not clear in this article). While using Bluehost, I had to do about three steps. First step is to use the MySQL Database cPanel to get access to the list of MySQL databases. Once there, I could see that the new staging database that I had copied using phpMyAdmin per the article, did not have a privileged user assigned to it. So, I created a user, but then discovered that the user I created had too many characters (16 is the max). Once I got that straightened out, I then had to Add this user to a database using the same MySQL page. As part of this assignment step, I was able to select “ALL PRIVILEGES” to make this user a privileged user for this new staging database. Once that was all setup, I was able to configure Wordpress to connect up to the staging database.

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8. Gayle

   Terrific resource! Reached a WP staging breaking point and then found this. Lifesaver! Thank you! Only things I’d add would be some meta information for newbies like me. : )

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9. LizP

   Yikes, too hard for me!

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10. Deborah

    Thanks for the tutorial. I seem to be stuck on one of the very first steps. When clicking go after changing the URL’s in SQL, I get a message of ‘# MySQL returned an empty result set (i.e. zero rows)’
    This is how I’ve entered the data:

    UPDATE wp_options SET option_value = REPLACE(option_value, ‘http://www.example.co.za/wp’, ‘http://staging.example.co.za’);
    UPDATE wp_postmeta SET meta_value = REPLACE(meta_value, ‘http://www.example.co.za/wp’, ‘http://staging.example.co.za’);
    UPDATE wp_posts SET guid = REPLACE(guid, ‘http://www.example.co.za/wp’, ‘http://staging.example.co.za’);
    UPDATE wp_posts SET post_content = REPLACE(post_content, ‘http://www.example.co.za/wp’, ‘http://staging.example.co.za’);

    Can anyone please help me with this?

    Thanks

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11. Andreas Kofoed

    Hi,

    First of all thanks for an amazing tut on this.

    I’ve encountered one problem so far and that is when I try to enter my subdomain through www.staging.example.com. I get this message: err_connection_timed_out ???

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    • Andreas Kofoed

      Hi,

      I figured this out as I was due to some table prefix.

      Now my staging.mysite.com is up and running, but the styling and layout is totally different.
      How do I do, so my files in my child theme applies to the current theme???

      It seems like it is missing a lot of pictures, css and some basic settings?…

      Responder

12. Patrick

    Thanks for this great tutorial!

    I’m finding that after setting everything up, comments on the live blog are now going to the sub-domain staging blog. I can’t find anything in the settings that explains this behavior. Do subdomains perhaps take precedence for some reason?

    Any ideas?

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    • Jennifer Filgate

      Perhaps when you ran the operation to update the URLs in your database you performed it on your live site’s database instead of the new staging site’s database? You have to select the staging site’s database after you create it before you run the operation. Maybe you missed that selecting step.

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13. Arjun Singhal

    I got errors regarding SSL certificates. I am a newbie when it comes to using Git and the command prompt on my Mac. So I couldn’t get to syncing everything like I wanted.

    Also, how it appears is that the steps are good to sync the local disks files to the server – changes in the theme folder etc.

    However, there is no syncing mechanism highlighted for the MySQL server changes in the case of Wordpress.

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14. Evan

    I don’t know. This just seems really confusing.

    So, a Git Bucket is like an intermediary between your local computer and the hosted dev server? For example, if I have website.com then I create dev.website.com then I create an account and empty repository in Git Bucket then I create an empty folder on my local computer, and I edit files locally and sync them to the Git Bucket repository and then how do I commit to the live site? Is there any connection and control to the live site? It seems like from here, you sync your Git Bucket repository to the dev.website.com

    Then what? I wish this article had a diagram to understand how this all works. It might make sense to you guys because you do it all day, but for the first time, this is a dizzying experience. Especially since multiple points in this setup failed and I had to go about custom fixing each one. At this point, I have created dev.website.com, copied all files from the live site to it, copied the database, connected it in, logged into the dev.website.com wordpress site, made sure all is cool, but now … I am lost as to what I do next.

    In your article, you ask us to INIT a local directory on our computer. Well, I’m trying out Git Bucket’s SOURCE TREE, which by the way looks great. But now what? Any help on what is the procedure from here? What’s the logic to all this?

    I create a folder on my local drive, it syncs to a Git Bucket Repository so that people can develop collaboratively. But who uploads the changes to the dev.website.com server? Don’t users need to be able to do that to see live changes on the server? So how does that all connect?

    And how do you update the final changes to the live website once you’re ready? Man I’m confused. I spent 3 days getting this setup and I can’t figure out this next step, because I don’t understand how that all works.

    Any help?

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    • Oscar

      Hi Evan, although I am sure you figured it out by now as its months later, I figured it may help others with the same question. After you have committed your code to version control, you would move your changes over to the server of your choice (dev/staging/production) using the deploy feature. This is described in the section above titled, “Deploying Changes From BitBucket to Staging Site”. Hope this helps clarify!

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15. vjohnson

    I am truly a beginner at this, and I have read the article a couple of times. I think my environment is almost set up, the piece that appears to be missing is in the install step. The directions say copy the files but do not install “yet”, when in this process do I run an install of wp? I am unsure if some of the issues that i ran into are due to my host which is hostgator or something that I’ve done wrong. Any input would be great.

    What is happening at this point is no errors but nothing is rendered on at the url for my staging area.

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16. Martin

    Nice article. Although, the whole way, you’re talking about setting up a development site on the server as a subdomain. But at the end your using a local Xammp server.

    How would you setup a test environment on the server where the doomain is hosted? Do you use bitbucket for it as well?

    Thanks, cheers.

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17. Alberto Serrano

    Hello , I made a staging site successfully but my live site already had a little problem with a plug in , I contacted the developer and he asked for my admin credentials , following your advice on other article I gave him log in credentials to my staging site and he fixed the issue , to make the changes on the live site he told me to import the database from the staging site to the live site , my concern is the sql changes I made to the staging database , if I copy the database isn’t my live site going to redirect to the staging site now ? I can’t find the SQL queries to delete them
    Thanks

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    • WPBeginner Support

      See our tutorial on how to update URLS when moving WordPress site.

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      Administrador

18. isagani

    hey,

    nice article, i followed all instructions and gave me a clean view process on using git and staging environment. hope all experienced people do what you did so many can step forward from beginner to advance.

    Thanks a lot.

    Isagani

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19. Kristof Bernaert

    Just a perfect article that helped me to setup the whole thing.

    My staging environment is on the same shared linux hosting, just in another directory.
    I used this also as the repo for git.

    With Coda, I’m working online in that staging. As I save changed files (mainly css), I see instantly the updates.
    So I don’t need the local files on my laptop.

    But how to checkout those remote files under the staging folder, without fetching a local copy?

    Thx!
    Kristof

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20. bcall

    Thanks for the article!

    I have one problem, though: I have two databases and am not sure which one (or maybe both) is connected to my live site. I checked the wp-config.php file and it’s linking to a database with a different name, one that does not appear in my database list (in phpMyAdmin). Is it possible that the database was renamed?

    Responder

    • Nick Jubrey

      Look in your wp-config.php file that’s where wp is directed to that particular database, the db your using will be listed there.

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21. Tiffany Johnson

    I’m having some issues with the dev site recognizing my theme and content. I copied over the following files prior to running my installation of wordpress, however the pages and content are still not being recognized. I checked the files and my media is in the uploads file, my themes are present, as are my plugins, but none of them are recognized in the actual wordpress site.

    /wp-content/uploads
    /wp-content/themes
    /wp-content/plugins

    Any suggestions on what else I can try? Thanks!

    Responder

    • Nicole

      I’m having this same problem. Any suggestions of what to try? I followed the instructions to copy those files from one folder to the other, and it is in the right place.

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22. Brad Scott

    @WPBeginner,

    For my case.

    Create subdomain: staging.example.com
    Create Document Root: public_html/staging

    Need to run the following SQL queries:
    The NEW_URL should be http://example.com/staging not http://staging.example.com

    Login: http://example.com/staging/wp-login.php

    Cheers & Thanks

    Responder

    • byberkan

      Brad, so that means you are not using the subdomain. You are just using it as a subdirectory which you didn’t have to create a subdomain to use that..

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23. Paula Lay

    Thank you so much for this tutorial! The step-by-step instructions are perfect for someone who hasn’t done this before. I encountered a snag where I was getting an error message after creating a subdomain (something like a problem configuring the DNS). For anyone that encounters this problem – clear your browser cache and cookies, and then you will see the correct screen. Took me days to figure this out (I gave it a few days because I thought it would take 24hrs or so for the domain to propogate).

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24. Random Dev

    Whoa. Wouldn’t it be simpler, cutting down on quite a few steps and reducing the technical nature of this process, to just use a backup plugin with a migrator (search/replace the database) function… instead of copying the databases manually, *and* instead of using Git/Bitbucket? Or am I not understanding something?

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    • Cannonpult

      For smaller sites, maybe. But plugins like Duplicator start to fail or have significant diminishing returns on larger sites. For example, if you were working on a site with a lot of media, Duplicator will never be able to transfer everything. You will get warning messages and have to leave media behind in the transfer.

      Yes, this tutorial would be overkill for a small blog. But it’s absolutely the way you should go for say, a woocommerce site with 3,000 products (including images and custom data).

      The other big consideration is frequency of changes. Some sites are fairly hands-off after they go live. Maybe you just update core + plugins and perform a few minor changes per year. Other sites might require weekly or even more frequent changes. If this were the case, it would become a pain to wait for backups and then drop a backup on the new site (crossing your fingers that it works each time). By using the method described in the tutorial, you can commit smaller changes at a time right after testing them.

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25. mgiulio

    Excellent article.I was looking for info about best practices for wordpress staging sites. The additional section on the git-bitbucket workflow is very much appreciated.

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26. nwesource

    Fantastic tutorial, thank you! I know WPEngine.com has a staging site built into their hosting options which seems fantastic although I haven’t tried it just yet. Are there any other easier options you know of to setup and operate a staging site, with more of a plugin functionality like WPEngine? They literally have a clone to staging button and a clone to live button that makes this seem like a process from the 80’s LOL…

    Amazing tutorial, thank you for enterprise level content!

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27. WPBeginner Staff

    No you first need to extract the zip folder and then upload the contents of wordpress directory to your staging site.

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28. Tony Leary

    Can someone elaborate on this one step:

    “First download a fresh copy of WordPress from WordPress.org. Upload the contents of WordPress to your staging site. Note, do not run the WordPress install yet.”

    I read that as “1) download WordPress zip file from WordPress.org and 2) upload .zip file to /staging folder via File Manager.” However, I don’t think that’s correct.

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    • bcall

      You can upload the .zip file and then extract the contents within file manager.

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29. WPBeginner Staff

    Most probably your subdomain is not configured correctly.

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    • Julius

      I actually found out the problem..and it’s been resolved…however, I am unable to add images to my library….anyone else experienced this challenge.

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      • Hans Lindgren

        Is the wordpress install running on Windows?
        (If so, you need to grant Modify NTFS permissions to IUSR on C:WindowsTemp)

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30. Julius

    Awesome tutorial…however, after I attempt to log into the staging site I am taking to the “Opps! Google Chrome could not find http”. What am I doing wrong?

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31. Julius

    This is really a great tutorial and something I been wanting to do for quite sometime. My problem is that when I visit the WP login screen it appears that the styling from my theme isn’t applied. Is this normal? Also, when I enter my credentials from the live site into the fields for the staging site, it doesn’t log me in. It’s taking me to the “Oops! Google Chrome could not find http”. Am I doing something wrong?

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32. Sloan Stewart

    Very helpful article. Only issue I have is that when it begins discussing version control, it switches from focusing on the alternate wordpress installation on the server to a local installation on one’s machine.

    I am assuming one would build your site locally (I am using WAMP) and then use Git/Bitbucket & Ftploy to update your dev/staging wordpress install? That would mean one would have three versions of the wordpress site at all times [Production, Dev/Staging, Local].

    How does one ensure your local wordpress install remains compatible with the database and other configuration on the server? Or is there a way to utilize Git/Bitbucket/Ftploy on the server without having to involve a local copy of your wordpress site.

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33. Karlis

    Do you need to create user for your freshly created phpmyadmin database?

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34. WPBeginner Staff

    No this tutorial is not written for WordPress multisite.

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35. Aathi

    Hi,
    Will the above process works for wordpress multisite ?

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36. Cheryl S.

    Because I typically develop in a staging area on my server and then move it to the clients server to go live, rolling back to previous versions is nearly impossible. This article has made me seriously consider implementing version control with Git and Bitbucket. Thank you so much for this tutorial.

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37. WPBeginner Staff

    Yes this would be a better approach.

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    • Mimi Bondi

      Thank you. Is it safe to simply copy all the files from the ”test” site and paste them over the current ”live” files via FTP? Or is there more to it?

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38. Mimi Bondi

    Would this be the best way to duplicate a website, set it up with a new theme/content then copy it over to the current live website?
    I want to change theme but it’s quite a big job so instead of activating it then frantically trying to fix things for days, I’m looking for a way to copy my current site, change it all ”in the background” then make the new one live. Please let me know if it’s even possible?

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39. Mimi Bondi

    Once i have my site exacty how i want it in the staging environment,
    is there a safeway to copy those files to the real live site?

    My goal is to change themes but because this would involve quite a bit of
    setting up, i am looking for a way to do this safely and only replace my
    current content with the new content when it’s ready (without changing
    permalinks and SEO hopefully). Is that possible?

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40. Larry

    Excellent article….I was able to follow the instructions step-by-step and complete the creation of development site on my hosting server. Kudos to the writter.

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41. Mike

    I’m having some issues when I try to run the SQL queries to change the references to the staging site. I am receiving the following error:

    ”
    #1064 – You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near ‘1
    UPDATE wp_options SET option_value = REPLACE(option_value, ‘http://example’ at line 1
    ”

    My SQL query is as follows:

    ”
    1
    UPDATE wp_options SET option_value = REPLACE(option_value, ‘http://example.com’, ‘http://dev.example.com’);
    2
    UPDATE wp_postmeta SET meta_value = REPLACE(meta_value, ‘http://example.com’, ‘http://dev.example.com’);
    3
    UPDATE wp_posts SET guid = REPLACE(guid, ‘http://example.com’, ‘http://dev.example.com’);
    4
    UPDATE wp_posts SET post_content = REPLACE(post_content, ‘http://example.com’, ‘http://dev.example.com’);
    ”

    As I missing a step or do I have something incorrect in query? Thanks for your help.

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    • Mike

      Never mind, I figured out my issue. Feel free to delete this comment.

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      • djramc

        i have the same problem. could i ask how did you solve this issue?
        thanks by advance

        #1064 – You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near ‘)’ at line 1

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    • WPBeginner Support

      You need to remove numbers from lines, replace example.com with your live site url and dev.example.com with your development or staging site URL.

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      Administrador

42. Bevis Larsen

    This article is most useful for the user who want to make advance wordpress application

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43. Brad E

    I followed the directions and am able to get the staging site to work. However, every link, page and even login revert to the live site not the staging site. How do I fix this?

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    • WPBeginner Support

      you need to change site address and wordpress address. To do that you need to run this SQL query in phpmyadmin for the database of your staging site:

      UPDATE wp_options SET option_value = REPLACE(option_value, ‘ORIGINAL_URL’, ‘NEW_URL’);
      UPDATE wp_postmeta SET meta_value = REPLACE(meta_value, ‘ORIGINAL_URL’, ‘NEW_URL’);
      UPDATE wp_posts SET guid = REPLACE(guid, ‘ORIGINAL_URL’, ‘NEW_URL’);
      UPDATE wp_posts SET post_content = REPLACE(post_content, ‘ORIGINAL_URL’, ‘NEW_URL’);

      Don’t forget to replace the original url with the url of your live site and new url with the URL of your staging site.

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      Administrador

      • Brad E

        OK – it works now. I had to run the query several times, but got it to work. The problem I am having now, is that all of the theme settings are missing. The header, widgets, background, etc. are set to the theme’s defaults. I am not sure how to update the settings to what the live site has. I copied the 3 files from the wp-content directory. Thanks for the outstanding article and support.

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44. ROHIT

    Hi,

    As usual, just read you well written article on staging. I’ve got only question in mind right now and is that if there is any changes made in database while working on any project then do I need to upload it seperately on server from local environment whereas files would automatically get deployed via ftploy.

    Cheers and Thanks.
    Keep your good work up.

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45. Clive

    If I make changes on my local WP project, I understand files in my theme are changed, and those are uploaded to staging via BitBucket/Ftploy. What about the database/tables from my local project? I don’t understand why those aren’t also included? Or would the database/tables in staging be updated based on theme changes that are uploaded? Thanks!!

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    • WPBeginner Support

      Clive, in your BitBucket repository you can only store your WordPress files. FTPloy simply syncs those files to your staging site.

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      Administrador

      • Paul Sweany

        What do you recommend for when database changes are made? Let’s say I create a new page; should I just re-import the database on the dev server after I make changes to it on my local copy? Also, moving it from dev to live, any recommendations other than manually importing it and running a search and replace to fix the URL?

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46. Glen Clay

    As usual, great article and right when I need it. Keep up the great work! On another note, I am on my iPhone and that annoying floating black ‘Trending’ bar keeps getting in the way of me commenting. This article benefited me so much that I went through the several tries it took for me to comment.

    Responder

    • WPBeginner Support

      Glen, thanks for your feedback. We will look into it.

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      Administrador

47. Eben

    I wasn’t really mentioned on what to do with the staging database and how to transfer the changes to the live database, especially if your client has been making changes to the live site while you’ve been making changes to the staging site and there are changes in both databases.

    This is one area of staging environments with wordpress that I haven’t been able to get my head around.

    Responder

    • WPBeginner Support

      Staging is basically for development, when working on themes or plugins. We imported the database only so that we have actual data to test with. It is not supposed to be a synchronized mirror of your live site.

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      Administrador

      • Juliana Maggioli

        I don’t know if is the same as Eben’s question, but everything is going fine till…: upload/transfer the staging content to the live site. supposing everything is perfect in the staging, how do i make all this perfect structure/content be the live site, without risks?

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48. Damien Carbery

    I have started using WP Migrate DB (http://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-migrate-db/) to convert urls and paths in the DB. It will also convert urls and paths that are in serialised data.

    So I copy the files to the staging server and create a database and then export the live db via WP Migrate DB and import it to the new database via phpMyAdmin.

    The biggest issue is when the live site is updated before I bring the staging server db back.

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49. Zimbrul

    If you have Softaculous is even easier to deploy a staging site to the live site: you can clone the site to a location within the same server.
    It’s what I’m doing: I create the staging environment and when done I just go the the list of my WordPress installs in Softaculous control panel and “clone” the site to the live location. The live location must be empty by other files for this to work.

    Responder

    • WPBeginner Support

      Thats another way to do it.

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      Administrador

    • Giacomo Ardesi

      Hey Zimbrul, can you give some more details about Softaculous and how you used it please?

      Responder

    • Giacomo Ardesi

      Hey Zimbrul, could you please give some more details on how you use Softaculous to clone your WP staging site? Thank you!

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50. M Asif Rahman

    Thanks Syed & The Team, that’s one of the most complete and understandable for normal readers Staging Guide for WP. Nicely done.

    Responder