Staging to Live Instructions please

Unfortunately there is no simple way until now so i recommend to repeat the modifications on the live site manually.

Wait a second, let me get this straight…. You have a plugin called staging, that creates a development environment where everything you do then has to get done again to live site, there’s no push to live button or something?

If so, this sounds more like a great github project, far from ready it seems to be released out to the masses of poor souls who will spend the time setting this whole baby up just to find out, it was a giant waste of time as its not going to do what’s envisioned.

I’m not trying to harsh at all Rene, I appreciate all the work you put on this plugin, but for it not to have a push to live is pretty silly now my friend.

I don’t fully agree with your negative assessment remymedranda

I hear what you are saying, but this plugin falls more into a “staging for testing” plugin category. It’s not a replacement for an expensive staging environment.

Agreed, it would be nice if you could push back to live, though I’d say that this plugin does about 80% of folks want, and that’s to test a new plugin or theme in a staging environment; without having to pay an arm and a leg at one of those crazy expensive “we got built in staging” hosting operations.

I’m very disappointed that there is no ‘Push to Live’ functionality on this plugin.
I just went through all of the steps, with repeated errors, adjustments and re-attempts to finally get this staging site set up… and then I realize there is no way to push any changes to live… and it feels like I just got bait-and-switched.

I understand the dev may not have intended this plugin to have that functionality, but that is not at all clear from the description.

Rene, I would have super appreciated it if you would have put that qualification in a prominent place in the Plugin description. Then at least I would know the limitations before I try the install.

As it is, I am fairly certain that the ‘expensive staging environment’ which The Hack Repair Guy mentions is what everyone who installs this plugin is thinking of because you call it a “DB, File Duplicator & Migration” plugin. The ‘migration’ description gives the impression that this can ‘migrate’ your changes back to the Live site.

Even the ‘Site Backup’ plugins can be used to ‘Restore’ data back to the live site… a feature everyone expects even though the Plugins are often just called ‘Backup” plugins.

Rene, you’ve clearly put some work into this thing, and I think the endeavor is worthwhile, but why leave the description vague on such a common misconception? Finding this out after the fact goes a long way to ruin the goodwill that you built by releasing it for free.

I strongly suggest you change the description to prevent misunderstandings. Isn’t there any way you can describe it better?

Is there any way to use a Site Duplicator plugin to migrate the changes back to the live environment?

But I guess the lack of permalinks functionality on the Staging site would prevent this from working correctly…

BTW, the direction for how to setup htaccess and nginx to allow permalinks is far from clear.

Perhaps pointing to a tutorial blog post specifically for WP-Staging instead of the generalized https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5564881/htaccess-to-rewrite-wordpress-subdirectory-with-permalinks-to-root and https://robido.com/nginx/nginx-wordpress-subdirectory-configuration-example/ would make more sense.

easy answer to all your problems gstrout would be using a plugin called WP Stagecoach.

I actually used a plug in called Push to Live that I found in the repository that worked with this plugin to what I wanted, but it was no longer supported, and I wasn’t going to take a chance with any of my clients sites. I forgot exactly what I didn’t like, but there was some problem, that made me just say forget this. I googled what i needed, and within 1minute I found Wp Stagecoach.

Paid about $40 and problem solved.

I think the plugin developer should put a VERY LARGE WARNING in first paragraph , indicating that plugin does not allow for pushing changes to live server so future users who google WordPress Staging and who find this plugin are not stuck wasting time installing a plugin that will not do what the are most likely expecting the plugin will perform for them.

This free plugin appears to pretty clearly describes its use, within the first 3 inches of its description:
https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/wp-staging/

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A duplicator plugin! Clone, duplicate and migrate live sites to independent staging and development sites that are available only to administrators.

Note: This plugin is not able to push back your changes to the live site at the moment! This is a feature i am already working on.
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Good morning guys,

The second text line in the plugin description already states clearly that this plugin does not allow to copy back changes. I will consider to add an admin message to make this more clear. Creating a blog post for better describing the process of enabling permalinks is a good idea too.

Pushing back changes is still a planned feature but I have no ressources at the moment to implement it. Verifying, maintaining and updating WP staging to keep it working with new wordpress versions will be done by me but i have no ETA for pushing back function.

Regards
Rene

Rene, I wanted to thank you for making this plug-in. You did an amazing job. I know we users are a spoiled lot and want it all. Sorry for being so selfish. What we don’t realize is that this may not be your full time job and this is an open community. Sometimes things are what they are. If you could put a warning on there letting people know that this is a one way street that would be great. It’s not the end of the world if we have to actually work for our money once in a while and find a way to migrate it back. It’s just a bummer that we assumed that this was like a standard staging environment tool that goes both ways. Thanks again for your hard work.

@crashkillsvince Thank you very much. Such statement motivates me much more to continue working on this plugin than the previous comments:-)

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Note: This plugin is not able to push back your changes to the live site at the moment! This is a feature i am already working on.
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@tvcnet Thanks for supporting me here. It seems that not everyone is reading the description of a plugin before they install it.
The name of a plugin and likely the good rating and reputation of a plugin is enough to give a plugin a try. That’s not bad and i appreciate everyone who is trying out my plugins.

So, i am going to comply to the need for an admin message. If this helps to save frustration and spending time with something which does not suit everyone’s personal needs than it’s ok for me.

You are awesome – no matter what anyone says.
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Rene –

I’m new to WordPress and just tested out your plugin. It’s awesome, though I agree with the others that push-to-live functionality would be an important addition.

Of course the fact that it’s free and you’re doing this unpaid is really appreciated.

Rich

Hi Rene,

I too learned this the hard way, after installing wp-staging on a client site, and working on it for a few weeks, and now when everything’s ready and I thought there would be some way to push the staging site back to live, I found this thread.

Even though I have installed wp-staging plugin a couple of times on 2-3 sites, and even had more than a few conversations with Rene, I did not notice that this plugin couldn’t push the changes back to live. Well, since there was no such option within the plugin settings, I understood this, but thought that there would be some way to at least do this manually.

So, I would request you to please add the notice to the admin panel in the staging site too. A detailed post on your blog, with a link in the admin panel can be helpful too.

Anyway, is there really no way to do this? Making the same changes on the live site, manually will take TOO much time and we can miss something, which can cause problems.

Say that I create a new WP site on https://www.domain.com/newtestsite, and manually replace the database to the main site (which also has the wp-staging site’s DB). Then, I drop the tables associated with the main site and the tables that remain are the wp-staging site tables only.

And, then, use the search and replace db script to change any https://www.domain.com/stage to https://www.domain.com/newtestsite.

Will this work or is it futile to try?