Why You Need a Staging Website for Your Membership Campaign
One of the main reasons WordPress is a great choice for your membership website is the range of themes and plug-ins this software provides and all possibilities for personalizing your site.
WHAT'S IN THE INSIDE? Toggle
- What a Staging Site is and Why You Need One
- Make sure to check with Your Web Host
- Find a Suitable WordPress Staging WordPress Plugin
- Final Thinking
With WordPress you are able to create improvements to your website through a plugin or themes, or custom written codes on your website.
It's just one click to change your site's appearance, incorporate additional features or alter your site in some other way, why not try a few ideas?
But there's a problem. Despite the relative simplicity with which we could implement a range of adjustments to our WordPress websites, these modifications could have unintended consequences that users may not like.
In this article, we'll talk about the ways you can improve your WordPress website while not affecting user experience that is essential in the case of paying customers.
What a Staging Site is and the reason you should have one
If you try different themes, download and install plugins or simply alter the widgets or menus of WordPress you may put your site at risk.
Check out what a user might think about if the style of your website changes suddenly and a feature ceases functioning and the entire site is unavailable.
They'll at best consider avoiding entering the details of their private information; however, as a last resort, the website could end up being abandoned, and will never be able to return.
You could also let others know about their experiences with your site.
All of the above scenarios may occur in the event that you decide to change the core aspects of your site. It's the reason you need the staging or development environment for testing the changes you plan to make to your website.
As a membership-site owner It's more crucial to not make modifications to your live site and to create a duplicate of the website page which only your staff and you can access.
The staging space you choose to use is a safe area in which you can do what you want without:
- Current members are frustrated
- Attracting new visitors
- The loss of data includes customer transactions.
Once you're sure that the changes you made didn't cause any difficulties, you'll then be able transfer these changes onto the live version of your site.
Sound good? Check out this article to learn how you can create a stage site for your WordPress membership website.
Make sure to check with your Web host
One benefit to choosing a hosting platform that is used by more than 30percent of all websites is the fact that there is a wide range of WordPress-optimized web hosting services available.
One of the functions which are offered to WordPress web hosts, including the most affordable plan for entry level includes the capability to create quickly a test site or staging area which is built on your current site.
The most effective staging-site solutions that web hosts offer let users easily create an private test zone, and later transfer the test version of your website onto Live Hosting.
It's feasible to take for as long and as detailed as you'd like to be when testing the latest configuration for your site. Once you're finished then you'll be able change the configuration for your members and customers within a couple of clicks.
If you do, having staging sites can help you keep away from issues that can occur whenever you are using your live website to test and developing.
Choose a suitable WordPress Staging WordPress plugin
In selecting a WordPress plugin for setting up the stage version of your website, you have the option of choosing between two choices:
- A plug-in specifically designed for this purpose.
- An all-purpose Web-duplication plug-in.
Review the pros and drawbacks of each method before listing the best plugins.
A purpose-built staging-site plugin might be a great option, however the choices offered are limited as there aren't many plugins like this out there.
Plus, you usually do not have the same control over the procedure and end result as that you have when you use plugins that are more general-purpose for copying sites.
An alternative is the general-purpose website-duplication software will give you greater control over the whole process.
The top plugins for this type of site allow users to duplicate certain components on your website, like for example, your database or your content. You can also choose more options for where the staging website is and include an actual local WordPress installation, or even a private subdomain.
While many of the best and most efficient WordPress websites-duplication plugins cost nothing however, they're often not as easy to use as the professional staging site software.
- WP Stagecoach - a commercial one-click staging-site-creation WordPress plugin with lots of useful features.
- WordPress Staging is an ongoing free WordPress online staging and the cloning plugin.
- Duplicator A powerful, however, more complicated WordPress duplication plugin for websites.
You can see that when you're prepared to purchase a premium plugin, the process is a lot simpler. Although some of the free alternatives might require some effort however, they're definitely a good tool to build a WordPress membership-staging site.
Last reflections
I hope that you have now understood the benefits of having a platform to create your WordPress site for membership.
There's no reason to not create code that's cowboy on a small personal website, however when you're running a professional membership site, you're entrusted with a greater responsibility to take care of the members of your website, no matter the cost of access to your site or not.
What can you do to create an online stage area that can host your membership site? Let us know your ideas in the comments section below.
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