v16 (2019) - Website Staging

The new staging area can be used to make changes to your site or design a completely new site offline, then push the changes to your live site. 

NOTE: The following information will only be accessible for subscribed accounts.

Trial-sites will not see the STAGING design option

Important - Pushing a staging site to your live site will overwrite EVERYTHING in your live site. This includes the menu, images, image sequencing in addition to the design changes (normally a design change only affects the design settings but staging is different). This cannot be undone.

Here's how staging works:

1. In the ADMIN tab open the DESIGNS panel.

2. You will see a toggle at the top with LIVE SITE and STAGING SITE. Switch to Staging Site.

3. A copy of your live site is automatically created the first time you switch to staging (and each time after you push staging changes to your live site).

4. Make any changes to the staging site you want. Change designs, reorder images, remove and add new images, change the menu, adjust site wide or individual design settings. Nobody but you can see the changes to the staging site.

5. To see the live site again simply hit the live/staging site button in the design panel or the VIEW LIVE SITE button on the bottom right side of your site.

6. Want to show someone your staging site? Simple, just append /staging to the url: https://mywebsite.photofolio.com/staging

Important - They must "unstage" to see your live site again because we use a cookie to show them a different site build database. To unstage simply append /unstage to your url: https://mywebsite.photofolio.com/unstage

7. To push the staging site live switch back to the live site and select the staging site from your design choices.

8. You will see the warning: "Make staging site live. **WARNING** All live site sections will be overwritten with your staging section changes. Are you sure you want to continue?" Hit yes to make the changes LIVE!

PRO TIP: If you want to delete your staging site and start over with a fresh copy of your live site simply switch to the LIVE site and hit the remove button. Then switch to STAGING again and it will copy your live site.

Staging menus outdated? Here's how to sync your staging to the LIVE site.