What is Bluehost Cloud Staging for Safe Site Update

In website development, a staging environment—often called a sandbox or development server—is a space replicating your production site (the "live site"). When you're ready to implement changes, ensuring that the production site remains unaffected by any issues arising during the process is crucial. This is where Bluehost Cloud Staging proves to be beneficial. With Bluehost Cloud Staging, you can create an exact copy of your production site in a secure, isolated environment, allowing you to develop, test, and refine updates before making them publicly available.

• What is Bluehost Cloud Staging?
• Bluehost Cloud Staging Sites vs. Shared Hosting Staging
• How Staging is Different from a Production Site
• How to Use Bluehost Cloud Staging
• Benefits of Using a Staging Site
• Related Bluehost Cloud Staging Articles
• Summary

What is Bluehost Cloud Staging?

In website development, a staging environment (sometimes called a sandbox or dev server) is where you create an environment that mirrors your production site but is inaccessible to the public. It allows you to safely test and develop new content, design updates, plugins, or other changes before publishing them on your production site. A staging site is a testing ground for improvements or changes.

Bluehost Cloud Staging Sites vs. Shared Hosting Staging

• Resource Pool Allocation: Bluehost Cloud staging sites are allocated resources (PHP Workers and Disk Space) separately from production sites. This differs from some shared hosting providers, where staging environments are often limited in resource allocation or may share the same resources as production sites. With Bluehost Cloud, the allocation is flexible. It can be adjusted, giving you more control over how resources are distributed across production and staging sites.
• Staging Site Promotion: Bluehost Cloud's staging feature allows you to swap staging sites with production sites instead of replacing them, unlike some hosts where staging typically replaces the production environment. Swapping is significantly quicker and offers the flexibility to switch back to the old configuration by merely swapping again without having to migrate content or restore backups. This simplifies testing modifications and provides a seamless promotion to production.

How Staging is Different from a Production Site

The main difference between a staging site and a production site is their accessibility and purpose:

• Production Site: This is the version of your website that visitors see. It is fully functional and a public-facing version.
• Staging Site: This is a private version of your website that you use to test changes without impacting the production site. Visitors cannot access the staging site unless explicitly shared with them.

In Bluehost Cloud, your staging site acts as a testing environment where you can freely make updates, install new features, and optimize content without affecting your audience's experience.

How to Use Bluehost Cloud Staging

Here's how you can get started with Bluehost Cloud Staging:

1. Log in to your Bluehost Account Manager.
2. Go to the Staging Dashboard. There are two options for doing this:
   • Websites Tab
     1. Navigate to the Websites tab from the left navigation menu.
        
        All websites currently associated with your hosting account will appear.
     2. Select the website to which you will access the Bluehost Staging Site, and click SETTINGS.
        
   • Hosting Tab
     1. Navigate to the Hosting tab from the left navigation menu.
        
        All websites currently associated with your hosting account will appear.
     2. Click the MANAGE button on the site where you want to manage the Bluehost staging site.
        
3. On the website details page, click the STAGING tab (use the chevron icon > icon to see the list of tabs).
   
4. On the STAGING page, you can organize your staging site and perform the following tasks:
   • Create a Staging Site
   • Manage and Edit a Staging Site
   • Promote Staging Site
   • Remove or Delete a Staging Site

Benefits of Using a Staging Site

• No Disruptions: You can make updates without disrupting the functionality of your production site. This ensures that your visitors won't experience downtime or errors.
• Safe Testing: Test new features or designs without risk to your production site's reputation or performance.
• Control: The ability to work on your site at your own pace without the pressure of making immediate changes to the production site.

Related Bluehost Cloud Staging Articles

• How to Create a Staging Site
• How to Manage and Edit a Staging Site
• How to Promote a Staging Site
• How to Remove or Delete a Staging Site

Summary

Bluehost Cloud staging is a safe, isolated environment where you can clone your production sites and test changes, updates, or new features before implementing them on the production site without worrying about affecting your production site. Bluehost's staging website lets you test it freely and deploy updates to your production site only when ready. With this feature, your visitors have the best experience, and your site is secure and stable.