Staging Sites vs. Local Development Environments

A Staging site is typically a clone of a production site, where you can safely test any updates, or try out new features, before pushing them live. It’s usually on the same server as your live site.

Staging is a service offered by many hosting companies. With many hosts, particularly the larger ones, it’s a simple process to clone your site and set it up as a staging site. See the How to Set Up An Avada Staging Site With Siteground video below for a specific example of that.

Cloning your production site to a staging site allows you to test WordPress, theme and plugin updates before implementing them on your live site. It also allows you to add new plugins and try out new Avada features or content without any concern about how they might affect the live site. When you are happy with the staging site, you can simply deploy that to the live site, and you’re good to go.

So staging sites have a very specific purpose, and are usually on the same server and directly connected to the live site for easy deployment. You can have a local staging site, but deployment is not as easy, and if the local server configuration is different to the live one, there’s no guarantee that it would work correctly when pushed to the live site.

So what’s different about a Local Development Environment. Well, just about everything. In our context, this is simply a local Avada install that can be registered, so you can add plugins, import prebuilts, run the Setup Wizard, and generally play with and explore Avada.

This is set up on your computer, and is a development sandpit so to speak, where you can play and explore without the content ever being intended to go live.

With a single license of Avada, you can not only run your live site but it also supports an associated staging site for your convenience. How you use the Staging Site is of course up to you.

For example, if you see a particular design feature on one of the prebuilts, you can just import that prebuilt, and see how it’s built. With Cross domain copying, you can even just copy and paste the feature to your live site.

Another huge benefit is being able to use the Avada Setup Wizard. You can create a new site and explore how the Setup Wizard creates multiple Layouts and Layout sections, how it creates and populates WooCommerce shop pages, and how it uses a range of post cards to display the dummy content on the features selected. This alone is a solid reason to have a local development area.

So in a nutshell, a local development area gives you the freedom to fully explore and learn the ins and outs of what Avada can do. You can’t easily do these things on a live site or a staging site.

In many ways, its good to have all three. A live site, a staging site, and a local development area. In that way you can have your live site, a gold standard method for updating, and a local environment to explore and learn.