Make sure to use a hosting service that supports creating staging websites

A staging website is nothing but a clone of the live website.

We create a staging version of our live website in order to:

1. Test out new plugins and features of WordPress
2. Check if the website is working as expected after performing WordPress, theme, and plugin updates.
3. For troubleshooting why something went wrong with your website and fixing it.

Honestly, any WordPress developer who has standards will never perform any changes on the live website directly.

They will first work on the staging site and only if everything goes well, they make the same changes on the live website.

To be more clear, a staging website is more like a lab rat that goes through a lot of medical experiments for us.

That’s how important a staging website is for you.

But sadly, most hosting services make it really difficult to create a staging website.

So, before purchasing a hosting plan, ask customer support about the staging feature.

Some of the best hosting services with good staging features are:

1. WPEngine
2. Cloudways
3. Kinsta
4. Rocket.net

I can’t stress it enough.

The importance of having an easy way to clone the website saves you a lot of time and headaches if you’re running a busy business website.