Setting up a staging environment allows you to test and approve any code, version, or plugin changes you are considering in a separate development area without affecting your live site.

Instead of imposing a singular workflow on our customers, we aim to be extremely flexible, and are happy to share best practices with you.

Using Git + a Variety of Deployment Options

We support the best of breed toolsets for source control (e.g., Git, SVN, Bitbucket, Hg, etc.) and deployment (e.g., Deploybot, Webhooks, Capistrano, Hudson, Jenkins, etc.).

Most customers opt to set up a Git-based workflow with their Pagely hosting (if they are doing CI/CD at all, that is) — with Github being the most popular git-based tool.

Tip: Read how to Automatically Deploy WordPress Sites From GitHub for steps on how to use our dashboard-infused Git Integration tool.

Here’s what a standard deployment process looks like:

1. A local development environment versioned with Git. 
2. A staging app of the site on your Pagely VPS.
3. A Git repository such as GitHub or BitBucket.
4. A 1-click Git deployment strategy, a GUI-based deployment system such as DeployBot, any of the deployment services mentioned above, or any tool that supports deploying over SSH/SFTP.

If you need some direction with finding a workflow suitable for you, we can certainly assist with your decision. Our Support staff can help directly, and if you need a more-detailed analysis and consulting, we are happy to recommend a vetted partner agency.

Pagely Sync + Pagely Clone Tools

For additional options, we have two in-house developed cloning tools for making quicker, one-time copies of your production site to a staging instance. Pagely Sync allows you to run a simple command once you’re logged into your VPS via SSH. Pagely Clone is similar, but much more dynamic for supporting repeated, or larger, WordPress Multisite cloning.

View our support articles for a technical overview of using each:

• Pagely Sync
• The Pagely Clone Tool

Our Video Case Study

Our goal has always been to enable the most flexible & dependable processes with scalability in mind. See how we helped an existing Pagely customer find a more complete staging workflow that could accommodate all of their goals with the help of our friends at Devrix below:

Find all of our plan features and resource allocations presented side-by-side in our Plan Comparison Matrix.