Most WordPress users find themselves constantly developing their site, from plugin updates to minor daily adjustments. It can be tempting to work on your site live, but even the smallest changes can put your site at risk. Even a single line of faulty code can compromise your site running smoothly.
Setting up a staging site (essentially a clone of your site) is a great way to test changes before taking them live. A WordPress sandbox is a staging environment in which you can modify your site freely without worrying about a mistake negatively affecting your site availability or your business.
Let’s take a look at everything you need to know about WordPress sandbox to get you on track to start innovating.
Dangers to look out for when you make changes on a live site
Even the smallest tweaks on a WordPress site can have a big impact. Until you test these changes, you can’t be sure how they will affect your site. Whether you are updating plugins or trying out a new theme, one wrong move can lead an entire site to crash. A site crash may be the worst-case scenario, but there are a number of other risks involved in implementing changes before testing them.
Some other potential consequences of working on your WordPress site in a live environment are:
- Broken website design
- Drop in search engine ranking
- Slow website load speed
- Loss of visitors and potential business
- Putting sensitive information at risk of exposure
WordPress website management is much more difficult when you do not know the potential issues that may arise with each adjustment you make to your site. The risks of working on your site in a live environment definitely outweigh the rewards, which is why you should have a staging site for all your WordPress development.
What is a staging site?
A staging site, or sandbox site, is an exact copy of your WordPress site in which you can experiment with modifications before taking them live. The staging site helps you catch errors in code or simply test different design elements without modifying your actual site. Whether you want to try out a new feature, update widgets or plugins, or make a major change, the staging site provides an environment in which you can do so safely.
While some users download WordPress locally on their devices to test changes before adding them to their live site, this may not always give accurate results. Certain changes made on the local server may not run the same way on the live server, leading to unforeseen errors.
Unlike the local WordPress server, the staging site runs on the same server configuration as your live site, so you will not run into any new issues when you are ready to take the changes from the staging environment to the live environment.
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