Creating a Staging Site in Enhance

A staging site is a private copy of your live website where you can test changes - new plugins, theme updates, PHP version upgrades - without any risk to the live site. Enhance makes this straightforward.

Method 1: Clone via Enhance

Enhance has a built-in clone option available when adding a new website:

1. Log in to web.teklanhosting.co.uk.
2. Click Websites, then Add Website.
3. Select Clone a website (the third option on the create screen).
4. Choose the existing website to clone and set the new domain (e.g. staging.example.com).
5. Click Create.

Enhance copies your files and databases to the new website automatically.

Method 2: Manual Staging Setup

If you need more control over the process, set one up manually:

1. Add a new website in Enhance for staging.example.com (see the subdomains guide).
2. Copy your live site's files to the new staging directory via FTP or the file manager.
3. Create a new database in Enhance and import a copy of your live database.
4. Update the configuration file (e.g. wp-config.php) to use the new database credentials and the staging URL.
5. For WordPress, use the Better Search Replace plugin to update the domain in the database from example.com to staging.example.com.

Keeping the Staging Site Private

You do not want the public or search engines indexing your staging site. Options:

• In WordPress, go to Settings → Reading and tick Discourage search engines from indexing this site.
• Add HTTP authentication via Enhance to password-protect the staging URL entirely.
• Add a robots.txt disallow rule: User-agent: * Disallow: /

Pushing Changes to Live

After testing on staging, push changes to production:

• Files only: Copy changed files from staging to live via FTP, overwriting the old versions.
• Database: Export the staging database, import it to production, then run a search-replace to change the staging URL back to the live URL.
• WordPress: Plugins like WP Migrate DB can automate the database push with URL rewriting built in.