What is the reason you need a staging Site for Your Membership Campaign
One of the main reasons WordPress is such a good option for your website that is a member-only is the wide range of themes and plugins this software offers, not to mention all possibilities for customization available to the user.
What's inside Toggle
- What a Staging Site is and Why You Need One
- Check with Your Web Host
- Find a Suitable WordPress Staging Site Plugin
- Final Thoughts
With WordPress it is possible to make improvements to your website with the use of a brand new plugin, theme or a custom-written web-based code.
It only takes a few clicks to completely alter the appearance of your website, incorporate additional features or alter the layout of your website in a different method, why not try it with a few ideas?
There's an issue. Despite the relative simplicity with which we are able to modify the design of our WordPress websites, the changes could have unintended consequences that users might not appreciate.
In this post we'll show you how you can improve your WordPress website without disrupting the user experience which is particularly important when you have paying members.
What is a staging site and Why You Need One
If you experiment with different themes, download new plugins, or just tinker with the widgets and menus of WordPress You could accidentally expose your website to risk.
Take a look at what a new member may think If the design of your website suddenly shifts, a function stops operating, or the entire site is unavailable.
They'll at best think twice when they're asked to enter their personal information; at worst, they'll leave your site without ever returning.
It's also possible that they'll go on to tell others of their disappointment about your website.
These issues can arise in the event that you decide to modify the core components of your website. This is why we recommend you use a staging site or development environment to test any changes you plan making to your website.
As a membership-site owner It's more crucial to not make changes to the site that you are currently running and create a copy of your site that only you and your team have access to.
Your staging site is an area of safety where it is possible to accomplish what you like without worrying about
- Members who are unhappy
- Alienating new visitors
- The loss of data includes transaction data from customers.
Then, when you're satisfied that the changes you made didn't cause problems, you're able to make them available into the live version of your site.
Sound good? Read on to learn how you can make a staging website to host your WordPress membership website.
Contact Your Web Hosting Provider
One of the benefits to choosing a hosting platform that is currently powering over 30% of websites is the fact that there's several excellent WordPress-optimized hosting plans that are available.
One of the functions that are available to these WordPress web hosts, including the cheapest basic plans that allows you to create quickly a staging site or testing environment based on your live website.
The best staging-site services provided by web hosting providers make it easy to create a private test area push the test version of your website into the live hosting environment.
Thanks to this, you're able to take as long as you want and as detailed as you want when trying out a new site configuration. Once you're satisfied, you can make those modifications available to your visitors and members with just a few mouse clicks.
Whatever the case, a staging website can help to avoid problems associated with using your live website for testing as well as development.
Select a Good WordPress Staging Website Plugin
If you are looking to select an WordPress plugin for setting up a staging version of your site, there are two options:
- A plugin designed specifically for this purpose or
- a more general-purpose website-duplication plugin.
We'll take a glance at the pros and cons of each approach before listing some plugins that are suitable.
A specially-built stage-site plug-in may seem like the best option but your options are more limited since there are less plugins like this available.
Plus, you usually do not have the same control over the process and final result like you do using more common-purpose plugins for copying sites.
The second option, a general-purpose site-duplication plugin will give you greater control over the entire procedure.
The top plugins for this type of site allow you to copy specific areas of your site such as the database, or even content. They also give you more options regarding where the staging site is located, including the local WordPress installation, or a separate subdomain.
Though many of the most effective WordPress web-duplication tools are available for free, they're often not as user-friendly as commercial staging-site tools.
- WP Stagecoach - a commercial one-click staging-site-creation WordPress plugin with lots of useful features.
- WordPress Staging A free, in-progress WordPress web-based staging and cloning plugin.
- Duplicator - an effective but more difficult WordPress web-duplication plugin.
It's clear, if you're prepared to pay for premium software, it's a lot more straightforward. Although the free options may require some work, they're certainly an option for building the WordPress Membership-based staging site.
Final thoughts
Hopefully you now understand the advantages of creating a staging environment for your WordPress site for membership.
There's no reason to not do cowboy coding for a private blog, but when you're operating a membership site for professionals, you have a greater responsibility to take care of your customers, regardless of whether they pay for access or otherwise.
How do you design the staging website to host your membership site? Let us know your ideas in the comments below.