Editing a staging site whilst protecting SEO work done

  • I’ve had a website for several years now and as it is a photography website it has thousands of photos. I have done a LOT of SEO work on the images.

    It’s time for a new website design as the developers of my current theme no longer offer support. So I shall move over to a Divi theme.

    I understand very little about the technical side of my website in terms of the host cPanel / file structure etc.

    I understand that I need to create a staging site to safely design a new website design. I have a few questions:

    1. Will a staging site be a straight duplicate of my live site, but changes made here will not be seen on the live site?
    2. Will the staging site be accessed with the same Worpress account I used before or do I need a new account and have to import all the images etc from the original site?
    3. Or will by default, the staging site in WordPress have access to the SAME library of images of the original site WITH the embedded SEO work done on the images?
    4. Once the staging site is complete, if not all the images of the original site have been used on the new site, will the rest of the images be lost once the new website is pushed to live?

    I hope all that makes sense. I’m really worried I will lose everything if I get this wrong and the existing website has had months and months of work put into it.

    Many thanks

    Ross

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  • Moderator bcworkz

    (@bcworkz)

    Will a staging site be a straight duplicate of my live site, but changes made here will not be seen on the live site?

    Specifics depend on how the staging site was created, but generally speaking the answer to both is likely “Yes”, but YMMV.

    Will the staging site be accessed with the same Worpress account I used before or do I need a new account and have to import all the images etc from the original site?

    If you mean your WP user profile, if the staging is an exact clone of production, then you may use the same login and password. But like content, if you change the staging user’s profile or password, it’ll only be reflected on staging, not production.

    You shouldn’t have to import images. They would have either been copied over or staging site images are pulled directly from production’s location. Which one depends on how staging was created.

    Or will by default, the staging site in WordPress have access to the SAME library of images of the original site WITH the embedded SEO work done on the images?

    It depends, see above.

    Once the staging site is complete, if not all the images of the original site have been used on the new site, will the rest of the images be lost once the new website is pushed to live?

    Again, it depends on the specific way staging is created, then later migrated to production. It also depends on what you do with unused staging images and if you’ve backed up the current production images.

    IF staging is a perfect clone and images were copied over, AND you don’t explicitly delete staging images, even if not used on any pages, the images will remain even if unused. But if you explicitly delete them from staging and they are not backed up, then they would indeed be lost.

    To be safe, make a full backup of production before pushing staging over it ??

    Thread Starter RossMP

    (@rossmp)

    Thanks so much, I really appreciate you taking the time to help. However, I had already just about managed to set up the new staging site just before I saw your message.

    A bit stressful, as when setting up the staging site I can across a window that asked if the staging site would ‘share document root’ of the existing site.

    It also said ‘If the document root is shared then the created domain will serve the same content as “example.com“. This setting is permanent.’

    I read online that if the checkbox is checked it could wreck the (my) website. I don’t really understand it, but went with the unchecked option when creating the staging site.

    So I now have a separate folder in my cPanel file tree that is a duplicate of my existing website.

    I can now access both the existing and staging sites in independent WordPress windows and edit the staging site without affecting the existing site.

    Now I just need to install a new theme and get going with the design.

    I did do a full backup of my site, but even that was nerve wracking as it wasn’t easy to understand and I wouldn’t even have a clue how to restore a broken website from a backup!

    I have very few good support lifelines indeed for understanding the backend of my website, and the advice I do find I often don’t understand or am scared to implement, as the slightest mistake can wreak havoc!

    So thanks again for the help and I am sure it will also help others ??

    • This reply was modified 9 months, 3 weeks ago by RossMP.
Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
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