I released a new version of WP Stagecoach today!
Here are some of the highlights of version 0.2.9:
- Performs some checks before creating a staging site to make sure that it will work: if the site is multisite, or if there is less than 150MB of disk space, you will get a warning before you create your staging site
- If the importing of your staging site is interrupted, you can now resume where you left off
- If there is another WordPress install in a subdirectory of your site, Stagecoach will not create a staging copy of that site. It will only create a staging copy of the site where you are running the plugin
We can’t say it any better than this happy WP Stagecoach passenger:
In fact, at Design33, we like using the WPEngine staging area so much, that when we come to develop sites that are not hosted by those good folks, it’s a pain to try and replicate the staging area functionality. We have gone through various iterations and combinations of self-written scripts, plugins and hacks, but we never found a workable solution that was simple to implement and use day to day. Until now. Enter WP-Stagecoach
Read the whole article.
While WP Stagecoach is still in alpha, we are asking potential alpha testers to tell us a little bit about themselves. This form has an optional comments field, and we have been surprised and delighted by what people have said in this field about why they want to use WP Stagecoach. Here are just a few examples:
I’m actually a Web Marketing consultant for SMB’s so designer is a hat I’m often forced to wear as well. I’m very interested to see how this plugin would work to demonstrate to clients what new optimisations would look like on their site before actually going live with the changes. This is often a challenge for inexperienced web users who have a hard time visualising what a series of changes might look like and how they would work together,unless they can actually see and interact with them on a site. Would also be useful for performing quick usability testing for site changes before moving them to the live site.
A big part of my job is maintaining customers sites, so I’m always looking for ways to make that process easier!
Got a couple clients who will squee if this works out as well as I think and hope it will.
I already host my own site(s) on wpengine.com – and wouldn’t ever want to live without a “one click staging site” anymore, so I greatly appreciate your excellent idea and implementation. 😉 But I do a lot of support on client sites and most of the time I wish for the same convenience for these sites too – without having to migrate to wpengine. When I need to create a staging site, I currently use BackupBuddy (along with the included ImportBuddy script) to clone a client site to my own server, which is still much more work than using your solution.
This tool has the potential to transform our development and maintenance process.
I’ve been building WordPress sites since 2003 and normally use WAMP locally then move everything to the live site via SFTP and WP-Migrate Pro. I also manage (on demand) a number of client sites and find that applying WordPress core and plugin updates can be a long and tedious process due to all the fiddling about setting up (my own) backups beforehand etc. I’ve been looking for a simple staging option and I’m hoping WPStagecoach might be it.
I have released a new alpha version; it contains many bug fixes, but also an integrated feedback form so you can easily let us know how things went so we can better gauge how things are going in the real world. We have had lots of people using it, but we have only heard from a small percentage of people who have had problems & contacted us about it–this will hopefully let those who have trouble more easily report it, as well as those who have not run into problems let us know that too!
After you have made changes to your staging site, WP Stagecoach lets you import those changes back to your live site.
I released a new alpha version today, and in this version I rewrote how the WP Stagecoach plugin handles importing changes from the staging site into the live site. Here are the major changes:
- The importation is now broken up into steps so it will work on slower hosts without timing out
- All of your changed files are bundled in a single tar file so all the changes happen at once
- It keeps track of your changed files, and allows you to revert them if things aren’t perfect
- It makes a dump of the database just before importing changes so you can restore that if things aren’t perfect
- It cleans up nicely after itself!
This was a big rewrite from how things were imported before with an eye to making sure you can easily get back to how things were before if you don’t like how things are afterwards.
We got WP Stagecoach stickers!
If you want some, leave a comment here or tweet @wpstagecoach and we’ll be happy to put them in the mail for you! In fact, this picture was taken by Jasper Jacobson of {code}roadies of some stickers that we sent to them.
WP Stagecoach was one of the new businesses featured in the first episode of the Matt Report WordPress Startup Challenge! Jonathan gave a demo of WP Stagecoach to a panel of very qualified judges, and got some feedback on the business model. We are very grateful to Matt for giving us this opportunity to gain some early exposure and get feedback from some experts!
Our last alpha testing party was fun, and really helpful. So we’re going to do it again!
To show our appreciation for people who are willing to give the alpha version of WP Stagecoach a try, and to squash your bugs as you find them, we are going to have an Alpha Testing Party. We’ll get together, have some drinks (we’ll provide drinks and snacks!), and try WP Stagecoach. We’ll be there to troubleshoot any problems that arise (it is an alpha version, after all), and answer any questions you have.
When: Thurs., Nov. 7, 6:30pm – 8:30pm
Where: The Hub, Glass Room (upstairs), 220 2nd Ave South, Seattle, WA 98104
What to bring: Bring a laptop and be prepared to try WP Stagecoach on a WordPress site
If you aren’t in Seattle, but still want to be in on the fun, you can join us on Twitter with the hashtag #wpstagecoach.
To RSVP, leave a comment on this post or send an email to info@wpstagecoach.com
Now that it is easy to create staging sites, I find myself finding uses for them that I hadn’t anticipated.
Testing changes: The obvious and common use of staging sites is to test out your changes. For instance, a client requests that I make some changes to the site, but they aren’t sure if they’re going to like how it looks, so I make the changes on the staging site, get the approval from the client, and then move the changes to the live site.
Testing updates: Another obvious use of WP Stagecoach is testing updates to plugins and WordPress. If you’re worried that an update will break your site, you can make a staging site, do the update, make sure the site looks okay, and then transfer your changes to the live site.
Using FTP when you don’t have FTP access: Sometimes I end up working on sites where I don’t have FTP access. If I need to upload new theme files, I need FTP access. Fortunately, if you create a staging site with WP Stagecoach, you get FTP access to the staging site. So I can create a staging site, FTP my files to the staging site, and then move the changes to the live site.
Letting someone work on your site when you don’t want them to access the live site: There might be cases where you want to let someone work on your site (blogging, developing, whatever), but because of security concerns you don’t want to give them access to your live site. You can let them do their thing on a staging site, and then move their changes to the live site.
Looking at the site before and after changes simultaneously: I ran into a weird use for a staging site… I was working on a site that had one of those mile-long theme options pages, and I needed to create a child theme. Activating the child theme would lose all of the customization on the options page. So I created a staging site, activated the child theme, and then copied and pasted all of those options from the parent theme on the live site to the child theme on the staging site.
I’m sure that the more I use WP Stagecoach, I’ll keep finding more uses for staging sites. Now that I can make staging sites easily, I want to use them all the time!
