Staging site
A staging site is a private copy of your shop where you try out an import or a change before it reaches the live store.
- Staging environment
- Test site
What it means
A staging site is a working copy of a live shop, kept out of customers’ sight. Changes are made and checked there first, then repeated on the live store once they work.
For product data, its main job is the test import. WooCommerce’s advice before a large import is to “create a backup and test a small import on a staging site”.1 Shopify gives the same advice in its own words: “test a small subset of changes first using a dev store”, its name for a test store.2
A test is only as good as the copy. Its settings must match the live store’s, such as the unit WooCommerce reads weights in.3 Otherwise a file that passes there can still go wrong live.
Think of it like this
It is a dress rehearsal on the same stage, in the same costumes, with no audience. Anything that goes wrong is fixed before opening night.
For example
Before importing 2,000 products from a new supplier, you import 10 to the staging site. The frying pans arrive weighing 1,200 kg each, because the file held grams in a column the store reads as kilograms. You fix the file, and the live shop never shows the mistake.
Why it matters
Shoppers see a mistake on the live store at once, and an import is hard to undo: Shopify’s imports “can’t be canceled once they begin”.2 The same mistake on a staging site costs only the time to fix the file.
Not to be confused with
A staging site is not a backup. A backup is a saved copy to restore if something breaks, while a staging site is a working copy to test on. Before a large import, WooCommerce asks for both.1
Sources
- WooCommerce documentation. Product CSV Importer and Exporter.
- Shopify Help Center. Importing products with a CSV file.
- WooCommerce documentation. Products Settings.