security warnings and 404 pages on staging site

It looks like the subdomain is being routed to some sort of staging scheme through cPanel, so its SSL cert wouldn’t even be close to matching. You know it’s safe, so clicking through the warning doesn’t carry any risk. If you’re getting a server’s webmaster 404 page, the subdomain routing is not even reaching your WP installation, there’s a hosting configuration issue somewhere before WP can even get involved.

I recommend bypassing whatever staging feature is available in cPanel. Place your cloned site in a sub-folder in public root. Set the subdomain to lead there. It’ll become a normal, public site. Set WP to discourage indexing by search bots. You can add further restrictions in the sub-folder’s .htaccess if you want. Be sure to use a different DB, or at least a different table prefix than that of the primary site.

Or even better IMO, clone the site onto a local WP installation. See the Developer Docs for more details on a local installation. There are numerous advantages to a local installation. The one disadvantage is you cannot easily demonstrate the site there to others. I think it’s still worth developing locally and only cloning the site to a staging site for others to view after all the major work is finished.

You can avoid the need to alter domain references in the DB when cloning by adding the domain to your local hosts file so domain requests go to the local site instead of the public hosted site. This does mean you couldn’t access the hosted site from that computer until the hosts file entry is removed. Since you have a clone of the site anyway, this shouldn’t be a problem.

Hi @bcworkz

Thank you for your reply.

I tried to move the folder to the public root folder, but it did not work, I still get the same page.

I don’t want to develop locally because I need my collaborators to see my work.

Perhaps I haven’t understood how to set the subdomain to point to the root folder. I thought I did this, but it is still not working.

Thanks in advance if you have any further suggestions.
Sarah

How to add a subdomain varies by host. There’s usually some sort of knowledge base article provided by your host that outlines the specifics. Typically there is an icon on your account’s control panel that opens the manage subdomains UI, where you enter the new subdomain name and which subfolder it should lead to. If your host also manages your DNS records, the DNS part of it might get handled for you, YMMV.

Some DNS allows for wildcard subdomains and nothing more related to DNS is required. In some situations you may need to add a new CNAME record to ensure any subdomain requests get routed to your server. DNS changes would be done through your account with whomever runs your domain’s DNS name servers (secureparkme.com). Whois says the owner is Dreamscape, but because of reselling, you may know them by another name. DNS changes can take as long as a day to fully take effect.

Because hosts vary in how they manage all of this, if you continue to have difficulty, I recommend asking for the help of your host to get your subdomain working.

Thanks @bcworkz
I think that asking the host is the best plan too.
I haven’t ever run into this problem before, but it is certainly due to a different hosting set up.
Thanks again for your help ??