[Charles]

coming from here

Using SlickStack to Install an Optimized WordPress Automatically on Ubuntu 20.04
byu/cypherpvnk inselfhosted

I am not sure understanding what staging does and the advantage or having it over the development subdomain? So it’s syncing all files from production -> staging (in which intervals?) BUT not auto syncing changes made on the staging site back to production? So I am safe to test changes like new plug-in installations on staging without having to worry it will affect my production site right?

[Cheryl]

yes SlickStack auto-syncs production to staging at a regular interval… you should be able to choose the interval in ss-config

the idea is that you can use the staging site to briefly test new plugins or features without having to constantly ensure that it’s the same code as your prod site.

syncing from staging BACK to prod is still dicey in SlickStack… there is a shell script that can do this for you, but no PHP/WP Admin method yet.

and you should be VERY CAREFUL doing this regardless cuz it will overwrite your files and data so it’s not encouraged (for now)

[Catherine]

Also note:

SlickStack only supports a single staging site subdomain, like:

staging.example.com

This cannot be customized or duplicated… no subdirectories, or multiple staging sites, and anything like that.

[Lawrence]

Can I use some staging plugins with SlickStack like WP Staging or Updraft or TasteWP etc

[William]

Automatically syncing from staging back to production would be a very bad idea.

[Isabella]

Can I use some staging plugins with SlickStack like WP Staging or Updraft or TasteWP etc

yup pretty much any staging plugin should also work with ss

[Jonathan]

Only heard of Taste WP now:

https://tastewp.com

Looks pretty kickass but idk how it works for staging?

[Victoria]

FYI

Pushing Development To Production

[Jacob]

Hey, what if I didn’t enable staging during setup wizard but now I want to enable staging on my SlickStack server? thank you!

[Elijah]

@Jacob just edit your ss-config STAGING_SITE to be true and then reinstall SlickStack again using ss install command.

Be sure you pointed staging subdomain to your production server IP address first

[Mary]

ss sync staging

[Jacob]

Just a note:

After discussion and years of consideration, we have decided to not move forward with any sort of PHP-based script for pushing staging to production. It would simply require too much time and effort to maintain safely, and SlickStack just doesn’t really value staging sites that much anyways (our philosophy is that staging sites are for temporary testing of new features only, not long-term redesign projects).

We might also remove the bash script ss-push-staging … tba.

More: https://slickstack.io/docs/pushing-staging-to-production

[Carolyn]

@everyone if the SlickStack staging feature is too limited for you, just use WP Staging or other staging services for WordPress, works fine.

[Gabriel]

Does this staging feature use a lot of resources?

[Raymond]

Does this staging feature use a lot of resources?

Disk space, no, because the staging site shares the /uploads/ directory with production on SlickStack which makes things a lot easier.

However on websites with very large databases, the staging site feature can be a bad idea on SlickStack, at least if you have SS_SYNC_STAGING set to true in your ss-config because this forces your server to dump the production database and then import to staging database every single day, which could take like 30+ minutes on large databases. During that process your server might have higher resource usage, so it’s not recommended for large sites.

[Madison]

can I setup standalone SlickStack on “staging” or “dev” subdomain?

[Catherine]

ss push staging

[Mason]

can you confirm… should I run ss sync staging in order to launch the staging site? or is the staging site already created during the ss-install sequence?

[Author]

Posts