This is a text supplemental for a video tutorial that shows how to make a wordpress website and create a staging environment for WordPress using Cloudways.
Here is a link to Cloudways if you want to check it out and sign up for a free trial (affiliate link).
For anyone that is wondering if a staging environment is worth it, it can be helpful for people that want to test changes or edit your website, the plugins and design modifications without risking messing up your website.
The risk is messing up your website is really in causing issues that make it difficult to revert and change back. For most, having a backup of the site prior to making changes is one of the best things you can do, but not everyone does this or has a process in place to ensure back ups are done on a consistent basis.
Secondly, if you impair your website and don’t have access to it because of some code changes then it can complicant matters further, so really, it’s always better to create a test environment or a staging environment for your website so you can make changes and see how it looks and how things run prior to update the actual site. This also helps so you do not have to take down your website, incase someone is trying to access it….especially if you have a site that is for information or for ecommerce. No one likes a website that isn’t up and running when they want to visit it 🙂
Here’s what you have to do in order to create a staging environment for your wordpress website – we’ll be using Cloudways to show how to do this. We’ll also show you how you can access your website or at least the temporary site using a staging environment so you can make the changes. As well, we’ll go through how to upload the changes to your actual site.
Step 1: Create a Cloudways Account
If you don’t have a cloudways account set up for your hosting, you can use the link here to go to the Cloudways website and do so (it’s an affiliate link).
Cloudways is great for auto scaling your website and for using in a team environment where you can give multiple people access to the work environment. There are a lot of other benefits with Cloudways
- Reasons to use Cloudways
- No need to manage the website yourself
- Easy to use dashboard
- Automatic back ups
- Automatic security patches
- Automatic caching
- Fast and scalable
- Easy to create staging environment (1 click)
- Pay as you go so you aren’t locked into a long term contract
- Collaborative environment
Step 2: Create A Website Application for WordPress
- Hover over the second icon on the left side
- Click to Add Application
- Click to Launch New Application
- Select WordPress (or any other choice)
- Name the application
- Create a server name
- Create a project name
- Choose the type of server you want to use
- AWS seems like a great option but might be more expensive than a budget allows for and all of the other options are good as well
- Select server size
- Select bandwidth
- Select storage size
- Choose location
- Now just wait for the server to be set up. Then we can create our WordPress website next.
Step 3: Set Up WordPress Website
Now that we have our server up and running, we want to set up our WordPress website.
- If you need to go to your server, on the left hand side you will see icons
- Hover over the second icon, and let the pop up menu show up
- Click on My Servers
- Once you see the server you set up
- Click on the dots on the server page (on the right of the box)
- You will see a pop up
- Click on Add Application
- Choose WordPress
- Name It
- Click Add Application
- Now wait for it to be added
Step 4: Access the Website
- Now that we have WordPress installed and set up on Cloudways, we can access it.
- So if you want to create a new website, you can do so by accessing WordPress.
- To go to your WordPress website, you can again, go to your icon list on the left and hover over the second icon
- Once the menu pops up, click on My applications
- Or you can go to your server and there will be a My applications tab
- Click on the icon to open up WordPress to see the website
- To login, you will want to go and click on the application (the wordpress box in your applications tab)
- You will see Admin Panel and a URL link
- You will also see a username and password
- Use the link and the username and password to login
Now you can use your wordpress website however you want. Whether you want to create a new website with a new theme or if you want to edit your website, you can do so. You can always access the website this way.
I will install a theme in the video tutorial and then show how to create a staging environment to edit and customize the website that can be deployed once ready and not impact the live site in the next section.
Step 5. Install Theme & Make WordPress Website
On the WordPress website dashboard, to make a website with wordpress, we want to install a theme.
- To go to the themes, go to the left hand side and hover over appearance
- And click on Themes
- Click on Add New
- And add the theme that you want to use
The theme you want to use will have specific settings and templates, not everyone is the same and they are not created by the same developers. I recommend using a popular one like the Astra theme which you can use for free or the Blocksy theme but there are plenty to choose from.
Just an FYI, there are also premium themes you can purchase, which developers offer with more features and designs that can be useful to many. It’s personal preference and again, it’s important to choose one that is popular and often updated by the developer. If you have questions or want some help, just let us know!
Once you have the theme installed, you can customize and create your website, edit the pages, posts, and layout.
Step 6: Create the Staging Environment For The WordPress Website
In order to create a staging environment, go back to the applications or server page in the Cloudways dashboard. Then you’ll see a pop up and you can create a clone environment.
Step 7: Edit Your Staging Site
Do as you wish with the staging site. And whenever you are ready you can push the new content to the existing website as we do in the next step. We can also copy new stuff over to the staging site any time.
Step 8: Pushing and Copying For Existing Live and Staging WordPress website
Now all you have to do is push to copy over your staging site to your live site and vice versa if you want to go edit in a staging environment.
And this is all you have to do to make a website with WordPress and a staging environment for developing and testing your website with Cloudways. Check it out and I hope this helps!