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How to Create a Copy of your Live or Hosted site as Staging on InstaWP? ​

With InstaWP, you can easily create staging sites from within the WP admin panel of your live managed site. It is an exact copy of your live site hosted in a secure environment where you can test as many changes as possible without affecting your live website.

Is your site hosted with InstaWP? This guide covers creating a staging copy of a live site that is hosted somewhere else, using the InstaWP Connect plugin. A site hosted on InstaWP has its own built-in staging environment instead, which is not charged and is managed only in the InstaWP app rather than from your site's WP admin: see Staging Environment for Hosted Sites.

In this guide, we will explore how to create a copy of your live WordPress site.

Let’s get started 🚀

For creating a staging site, you need to add an InstaWP connect plugin to your Live site. Refer to the Add Connect Plugin to Site document for more information.

Using the demonstration below, let’s try to create a staging site from a live site that has an InstaWP connect plugin installed in it.

Create a Staging Copy From Your Live Site ​

Step 1: Go to the WP Admin Panel of your live site using the Magic Login button and select Tools > InstaWP from the site's admin panel. Now, click the Create Staging Site button.

Step 2: Select a staging type (Quick, Full or Custom Staging) and click Next Step. Full Staging creates an exact copy of your live site.

The Select Staging step, with Quick Staging, Full Staging and Custom Staging options

Step 3: Set the options you want, such as Active Plugins Only or Skip Media Folder, and click Next Step.

The Select Your Information step, with the General Options and Sync Options checkboxes

Step 4: On the Exclude step, choose any files or database tables you want to leave out, then click Next Step. Click Expand to see each list.

The Exclude step, with the Files and Tables lists

Some items cannot be excluded

The WordPress core database tables and the wp-content folder itself are greyed out, so Select All cannot tick them. A staging site cannot be built without them. You can still exclude what is inside wp-content, such as the media folder.

Step 5: Check the staging type and the Space Required on the Confirmation step, then click Create Staging. The copy starts straight away.

The Confirmation step, showing the staging type and the space required

Step 6: Click Track Migration to follow the copy on its progress page. You can close the WP Admin tab while it runs.

The Creating Staging step, with the Track Migration link

When every phase shows Done, click Visit Your Migrated Site to open your staging site. It also appears in the Sites list of your InstaWP dashboard.

The Track Migration page at 100 percent, with the Visit Your Migrated Site button

For more detail on each option, see Create Staging Site.

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