Setting up a Staging Environment for WordPress Websites - Monday Masterclass

In this Monday MasterClass, we set up a staging site in a local environment where we can make changes to our site, test plugins and updates without risking any harm to our live/production site.
This episode covers a lot of valuable web-building information for all levels looking to learn how to:
- Set up a backup job for your WordPress website
- Install Local by Flywheel and set up a local staging environment
- Load and launch a backup version of your site on your staging
environment
- Create a blueprint
Read more about building and setting up a basic online store in the in-depth post featured in this edition of Elementor’s Online Magazine:
elementor.com/blog/wordpress-...
// TOOLS WE USED in this MASTERCLASS
▸ Local by Flywheel | localbyflywheel.com
▸ Back WP Up | wordpress.org/plugins/backwpup/
▸ Elementor | elementor.com
▸ Portfolio (Template) | elementor.com/blog/portfolio-...
// TOOLS WE MENTIONED in this MASTERCLASS:
▸ WP Engine | wpengine.com/
▸ SiteGround | www.siteground.com/
▸ WP Staging | wordpress.org/plugins/wp-stag...
▸ WP Stagecoach | wpstagecoach.com/
▸ Updraft Plus | updraftplus.com/
▸ BackupBuddy | ithemes.com/backupbuddy/
// LEARN MORE:
▸ Learn how to push your updated version of your WordPress website from the staging environment to the live/production site | Click Subscribe - Don’t miss our next Monday Masterclass.
Get Elementor: elementor.com
Get Elementor Pro: elementor.com/pro/

[@aliamin3358]

This is really great. I did not know flywheel had this option. Will definitely use it for the future sites.

[@nelsonmanzano]

Awesome, practical, clever video, you guys rock!

[@JohnWagner1]

Good video finally someone has done it easily.

[@ahesse]

Well explained! Thank you. As I reflect on our sites, however, I realize that most staging sites nowadays are being reviewed by several team members at different locations before going live. Local staging won’t work. I’d love to see a video with recommendations for hosted staging.

[@qaiserazeem]

Indeed very helpful and clear explanation. If you could also explain how to handle multiple developers making changes and pushing to the production environment without overriding each others changes. Thank you

[@wanderoffinc]

I use Local, its an excellent tool . Great videos I like how fast your vids are

[@manny_f]

Thank you for another great tutorial

[@MaroSola]

Thanks for this useful tutorial! 👍😊

[@vitodanelli]

Thanks for the informative video.

[@paulcobb1595]

This looks great and keen to use - but on trying with a multisite installation (subdomain) got into all sorts of problems - and struggling to find some sensible instructions of what to do to import a multisite sucessfully

[@jjasminchang]

Thank you!

[@dfrodney]

I couldn't get BackWPup backups to download all the way and i failed hard trying to figure out gzip at all.

[@yaroslavicy]

Just between us - Monday classes ROCK!))

[@OliveVlog]

How do you create a stage with the Pro version on local?

[@laptopshop9750]

Hi, I bought an Elementor Pro licence and use it at my main site: when I tried to use it at stage site (a subdomain of main) it's shows that is not a licence copy(?!!!): do you know how to solve it?

[@sonjaparham6224]

I'm having that problem right now so I guess I'd better learn local staging. The license is on the "live" site running the Coming Soon! page

[@tylerbegley1414]

Laptop Shop Did you ever get it to work?

[@curioushabit]

Could you please make a class on how to make custom post layout, meaning the post loop template.

[@YasienSarlie]

What do you do for WooCommerce sites that are taking daily sales?

[@victormendoza3295]

Using AWS?

[@martinsmithson563]

At 6:29 you get the same "License Mismatch" banner as we do - yet you don't mention this in the video. How do you use Elementor Pro features on this local site without deactivating Pro on the live site or buying another license? I've read that Elementor Pro should work on .local sites, but it doesn't for me (and others). Working offline on Airplane mode isn't really a good option for obvious need-internet-constantly reasons - why can't we manually enter the activation code or license key on local sites? For every active license we have, can we get a secondary license or code for local staging?

[@martinsmithson563]

I'm no expert, but if anyone else sees this, I seem to have it working now. I found a workaround to access the old manual activation page (via github.com/elementor/elementor/issues/8667) - from here I was able to deactivate and then reactivate using the same license key found in the Elementor account. For those that don't want to follow the link for full details, all I had to do was add "/wp-admin/admin.php?page=elementor-license&mode=manually" to after the domain to see the page (eg mydomain.local/wp-admin/admin.php?page=elementor-license&mode=manually). Now I have both my live site's domain and my local domain listed as active in my Elementor account using the same license key and so far it all seems to be fine. I had read somewhere on the Elementor site that .local sites won't be classed as officially "active" and won't be treated as an official activation that so far that seems to be the case.

[@reed3taylor]

When I try to go through Local the WP Dashboard is saying that the Elementor license is mismatched. Shouldn't it recognize that .local as a staging site now and not have to add to the license? Please help!

[@sujatharamdas25]

After following your video exactly the way you have described, Local keeps opening the live site when clicking on the WP Admin button. What am I doing wrong ??

[@markrazielfrank9422]

im having difficulty with the EPERM error and have tried damn near everything to fix thhis issue so i guess, no flywheel by local for your boy.....

[@andersonkoh1382]

HOw about the licening part? I work with local before but the license required me to activate and i'm unable to use the pro features.

[@csoutsource]

Can you please link to the follow up video?

[@FrankellyValdez]

For some reason BackWPup doesn't work for me, when I am ready to download the backup it says "Please wait..." and it just stays there.

[@jasperchan6681]

From my experience local flywheel is very laggy in the admin dashboard. Even clicking a button to any pages or any edits took me at least 10 seconds to load. I also found out that it is a common bug in the community of local flywheel. Tried various ways to make it faster but it doesnt really work. Hope anyone who had encountered this can shed some light to me.

[@patrasphotography6892]

This needs to be updated as Elementor Cloud has backup now included, but it does not offer staging. Staging is very necessary.... The backed up file solution in cloud does not work in Local, it gives errors. Are there any solutions to this?

[@hapzfl]

Great tutorial. Unfortunately some stuff does not work for me: Backup with BackupWPup has major issues. My backup for test purposes ran for almost 7 hours(!) and support from them is minimal if at all. I tried it with another backup plugin but that created several zip files and I have not been able to figure out how to import that like you described.

[@collinfarrell9718]

Similar issues. BackWPup seems to be very buggy. I can't get a successfully downloaded zip.

[@Anthony-wg7fn]

I'm having the same issues. Did you guys recitfiy this or go with something else?

[@Musicmatttheonly1]

It says the local by fly wheel can be harmful to my computer. ?

[@EoinDM]

When I get to the drag and drop step at 6mins, I get the following message: “Error Importing Site: Sorry, we couldn’t figure out what to do with the import file provided. Please extract it manually.” Anyone else get this?

[@Elementor]

I suggest reaching out to our support team! They'll be happy to help you out if you're still having trouble with this.

[@WPSolver]

I have the same problem ...

[@WhalenDitty]

I had this problem too. However I noticed that on my Mac the backup zip file was automatically extracted into it folder and file structure. I simply zipped them up again and then dragged this into Local and hey presto it created my local site...

[@grantmurphy7965]

I have the same issue, windows. Did you ever figure out the cause?

[@collinfarrell9718]

I have the same problem. It looks like the zip fles being downloaded from BackWPup are not valid

[@joseph-the-seventh]

So with local staging like this, how do you send the updated site to your client for review before going live?

[@MrArtiisan]

never saw a reply to this

[@Kensingtonhawk]

Just share the site link.

[@haroldgar12]

i wish it was as easy as this guys shows, but I end up with errors. when I try and drag the .zip file into local, a message pops up saying "We don't know what to do with the import file provided. please extract it manually"

[@haroldgar12]

anyone else figure out a way to get around this?? I did exactly as this guy did but it didn't work. It still gave me the same error. This piece of crap is useless

[@RomkeJellema]

This is good stuff. Heading to my laptop right now to set things up. This should be fun. Now please don't spoil that by telling us next week that we should pay a fortune to upload everything to the live website, alright? Fingers crossed. 😉

[@tracytan1614]

Yes,I hate this way too.so maybe need to wait to next week to find out before use it.

[@phoenixideas2089]

You don't have to pay, learn how to move from local to live on flywheel here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/bGWxmamNjp14m5o

[@RomkeJellema]

@@phoenixideas2089 Thanks for that, I appreciate the help. I got to halfway down that video, seems to me that it could be simpler than explained there. Just need to search for it. Doing so in 3, 2, 1... Good night!

[@Michael_M]

Love the masterclasses - but where are the woocommerce courses that were promised?

[@AndreWilliams876]

Did the backup but when i try to download the backup onto my mac it keeps saying download fail. anyone know how to solve this issue?

[@ironhawk175]

I keep getting this, did you find anything

[@AarnaProductions]

@@ironhawk175 I got this. But I directly downloaded from the file path and that worked.

[@asadollahkeshavarzi7396]

When I press Admin this I get this error: Not Found The requested URL was not found on this server.

[@WayneDowning]

Installed WP Backup, and the "job" will not run!!

[@deepluv2kvi]

Were you successful in getting it run? I'm having the same issue.

[@peterserrano7167]

To use Elementor Pro on staging you have to have a license for it. It would be nice if Elementor gave Pro users the ability to use their Pro license for local staging without having to buy another license.

[@tracytan1614]

Peter Serrano i didn’t try yet,did it really need to buy another license??

[@peterserrano7167]

@@tracytan1614 Hi Tracy. I believe so. A work around may be to go to your Elementor account and point your license to the staging site, and then point it back to your live site again. I'm not sure if you would temporarily lose any formatting or active capabilities on your live site if you do that though? Either way it's not a great solution.

[@eivrones1]

@@peterserrano7167 ​ This is correct, AND to make matters worse, if you disable Pro, I believe you indeed will (temporarily) lose the Pro-functions on whichever version of the website you disable. I can not fathom why they have done it this way, and they know about the issue. I love Elementor, but this way of doing it is NOT user-friendly. All they need to do is allow Pro to run on multiple sites as long as it is the same domain. Several other plugins are doing it this way without any problems.

[@peterserrano7167]

Eivind Rønes Thanks for confirming. I always wonder if it’s just me who’s missing something.

[@Jim.Hummel]

I was under the impression that Elementor Pro licenses ignored local setups if using .test, .dev, or .local as the TLD. @Simon @Elementor , can you please confirm?

[@austinskillings4550]

Having a major problem with this. It will not work at all, I have listened and did every one of your steps. I have created a zip file with backwpup. And when i drag it into local it says "Error Importing Site Sorry! we couldn't figure out what to do with the import file provided. Please extract it manually." I have tried extracting it manually also and it does not work. When i try to extract it gives errors in 7zip and won't even try in windows extract. Am I doing something wrong? or is something wrong with my hosting account right now? Any suggestions, Much appreciated!

[@collinfarrell9718]

BackWPup is giving me corrupted zip files so I'm getting the same error.

[@nickpage9138]

Hi, please help, I have followed and successfully dragged and dropped my backup into local by flywheel, but when I tried openning the admin, it says the email/password is not correct.. ive tried the usual root no password, root - root, my email address and password as it is on my live site, or what I usually use to llog into my live wirdpress site - username and my usual password.. I either get incorrect username/email or I get a page that says "you are not allowed to view this page" ... please someone help! Much apprecated, Nick

[@Mike-ny6sf]

Yup! I get the same thing. Either the email and password is rejected (I've tried all my email accounts and passwords and WP login and still get the same error message) I've deleted my locals account and program from my folder and reinstalled it. No luck. Plus, I can't find the follow-up tutorial he talks about on how to go live with the local site. Enough time wasted, I'll find another way to make a staging site.

[@mikewilliamson7441]

I feel like a 16 yr old student driver in his first driving lesson with a stick shift trying to merge onto an LA freeway! I thought I followed this step by step, set up locals and backwpup and got everything loaded. Thought I was home free but couldn't login into wp-admin-wouldn't accept any of my email accounts and passwords or my wordpress admin login info. Totally frustrated after hours of trying. I deleted locals account, etc. Remove the file folder from my computer. Remove it from my dashboard. Maybe start over tomorrow ...or never! haha.

[@helm3073]

keeps saying to manually extract,, weird followed all the steps

[@timsimmons7916]

Local (app) has issues on my PC.

[@phoenixideas2089]

Get a MAC

[@timsimmons7916]

@@phoenixideas2089 I have attempted to buy a Mac, but every time I talk with one of those geniuses I realize how much I can't stand Mac people and I don't want to become one. Just the idea of putting an apple sticker on the back of my car makes me cringe. Are you a Mac user? LOL

[@phoenixideas2089]

@@timsimmons7916 Yes Man, get a MAC, period!

[@chrisdawsondrumming]

Hi there, I love the idea of this however every time I import the file It comes up with "Error Importing Site. Sorry! we couldn't figure out what to do with the import file provided. Please extract it manually." Have you got any ideas as to what is going on?

[@therealmanub]

Next monday link : kzbin.info/www/bejne/o3yynZp5jNOliMk&ab_channel=ElementorWebsiteBuilderforWordPress

[@erichepperlewp]

#UPDATE: Just in-the-wild experience here. I've watched several tutorials on different streaming sites that involve "Local by Flywheel". LBF was a highly-touted service and within about a year or two of 2018/2019 it got sold to some other company and is no longer "by Flywheel", and -- in my experience -- has never worked the way the tutorials describe. A flash in the pan that could have been great for local development environments.

[@LolkeDijkstra]

To some extent it's clear, but to me it's a pretty cumbersome process having to make a backup, copying and subsequently testing. It's inevitable you'll make mistakes from time to time. Another thing: what's not clear is what happens with the "life data" on your life site. Since it's likely to be part of the backup, you'll have a problem when pushing the results back to life, because in the mean time data may have changed. This partly defeats the purpose of this staging procedure.

[@Valeras]

Больше по теме, зачем этот мусор? :(

[@SundayUkafia]

2nd to like and 2nd to comment. LOL

[@phoenixideas2089]

And last to understand what he said in the video 😂

[@iwbowden]

While *you* might call it, "An environment that we create where we can experiment and test our website before it goes live." I think I'll just continue to call it a "staging site." It's a bit more compact, don't you think? And if you think setting up a staging site is fun then I think you need to redefine the definition of that word! Otherwise, a helpful and informative video from Mr. W.P. Hyperbole himself.

[@ourwhirl]

here's the security issue with this: almost all of the sites/networks being used for staging environment are part of brute force login attacks -- four years of attacks, with most recent data sent to FBI now, since networks are not taking the matter seriously. docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/17hYtvOUkRPHBxofXaxNXQyokwVzthYlVAWf_BBk1RV4/edit?usp=sharing docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ezlYSRRu9bV5Ep4PB4Q9fzrnjuiABm3GfHOpVVf6_18/edit?usp=sharing

[@justaskdad]

Why not just clone website using subdomain? Add plugins, try new things on cloned site before implementing them on real site.

[@wahby07]

Edwin Hernandez Or subdirectory.. There are many ways to do it, but the benefits of local dev are speed and controlled environment

[@MickyNanuk]

Absolutely ridiculous that you can't stage on a subdomain or folder on your site without buying extra licenses. This along with the catastrophe that was the last update that you refuse to acknowledge means I'll be moving away from elementor asap.