I want to develop a new site for a business venture. In 2012, when the LarryTalksTech site was created. I pretty much did it live. No “maintenance mode” for me, I just stumbled right through the process. Not too surprising, I made a lot of mistakes along the way. The new site will be WordPress based (like LarryTalksTech) and with more complexity than my current skill sets support. So I need a place to test different approaches and processes and shake out any bugs in the new site. As a result, I decided to do what Developers have done for years and create a staging site for my new WordPress site (adventure?). After some research, there are two ways to do this:
- Create a staging site for WordPress on a “somewhat virtual environment” using MAMP (Macintosh, Apache, MySql, and PHP). In this scenario, the staging site is on your computer.
- Create a staging site for WordPress on a sub domain of an existing WordPress site.
One of MAMP’s strengths is that you are not encumbered by Internet speed or bandwidth issues. You process your work as fast as your local computer will let you. In addition, as you tinker with a new site, you can do so with an improved degree of security. The downside is that the site you develop may work well in the MAMP environment you created, but may have some problems when setting up on an actual ISP server, with a lot of different hardware.
For more information on developing a website using MAMP, click HERE.
On the other hand, creating a staging site for WordPress on a sub domain of an existing WordPress site doesn’t have a lot of downsides, assuming you have an existing site. When correctly installed, WordPress on the staging site has its own database and the WordPress install doesn’t co-mingle with the files of the parent domain. It is a unique site.
The video below, from wplearninglab.com, will take you through the process step by step. It is the one that I used to create my staging site. Excellent instructions.
