How have you created a staging environment?
The support team asked me for staging site credentials to investigate an issue, and I realized I don't even have a staging site yet. 🥺
I've done my initial research and found two ways to go about it: 1. Creating a staging site with xCloud 2. Using a staging site plugin.
But I'm looking to learn the best method to handle it and any best practices from the FC founders here. All thoughts and suggestions are greatly appreciated. TIA! 💚✨🙏
If you have xCloud, you should create a staging site with it. It creates an isolated instance so if during your tests either site gets infected, it doesn't affect the other site.
Haven't used plugins for this, but I doubt they can create a completly isolated environment but more likely they are running along side with the current installation.
Kristian Pesti Thank you for your helpful response, Kristian! Much appreciated! 💚✨
The GS I run most of my sites on servers using SpinupWP (similar product to xCloud), and typically set up staging sites there too.
Depending on sensitivity/security needs may set up basic auth for the whole staging site, or restrict any real content to logged-in users/specific user roles.
I try to keep as much real user data off staging sites too, as they are another potential security vulnerability / point of breach, and typically have a bunch of dummy data in FluentCRM and other plugins.
One thing to be aware of if duplicating sites - it can be a good idea to turn off all email sending (e.g in FluentSMTP) before duplicating, especially if you have a lot of recurring/automated emails!
Jesse Benjamin Thank you so much for such a detailed response, Jesse! This entire response was so helpful. Thank you for being so kind and helpful! 💚✨