A staging website is a preliminary website used when trying out updates or new installations in a professional way.
Do Not Tamper or Accidentally Break
Unlike tampering around on a live production website, using a more professional approach really pays off for all parties involved. Deploying a staging website offers the added benefit of a sandbox installation developers can play around with entirely risk-free. When something goes wrong on a staging website, there is no danger of disrupting a live website or “throwing out” website visitors. When there isn’t any risk of visitor-lockouts, there isn’t any risk of interrupting traffic in any other way either. This also eliminates all risks of terminating search-engine robot sessions or crawls or interrupting web-services transmissions, API data access and more.
At the ffWeb Agency, we regularly make use of staging websites for most projects we take on, large or small, for the exact reasons listed above, and then some…
Show Before It’s a Go
For clients, the use of staging websites has large benefits, too. Staging websites can serve as a preview options so clients can see what their contractors or IT developers are coming up with, and if they like it or not, before going live and suddenly having some layout they don’t like on a production website and visible to their online-store customers, visitors shopping for information, or buyers wishing to order online and ending up confused. Any shortcomings of a new layout or subsequent reversals to an error-free older version (if necessary) remain invisible to the public entirely, if a staging website is used properly.
Eliminating Annoyances
Any back and forth between versions would happen on the staging website — the sandbox — only, and hidden from the eye of anyone other than the ones concerned with the job.
And ultimately, when all work is completed and initial bug-fixes and testing are done, the release and switch to the finished new version is a matter of minutes (sometimes seconds) and does not result in a noticeable disruption to website availability for visitors or users.
Worth the Extra Effort
As a result, it should be obvious that the advantages of using a staging website by far outweigh the additional effort needed to do so, and it should be equally obvious why here at ffWeb Agency we will do so. This extra step saves client frustration and headaches on both sides of a professionally managed website-setup or website-redesign project.