How to sync a staging site to production

Syncing Environment to Live/Production

To push changes from your staging site to the live environment:

Go to Staging Environment

Inside the staging environment, click on Sync to Live:

Database Sync

Some staging environments are not flexible enough when it comes to database syncing. This means that you may need to export certain database tables from the production website and import into the staging site before you push that staging website to production.

With Staq, you have flexibility to exclude certain database tables from being overwritten when you push it to production (it’s a different concept of bringing the database down into staging and then pushing it back to production):

Select Data

Staq provides you flexibility with the content you can sync so you don’t have to sync the entire website. For example, you can sync either individually or together the following:

• database
• themes
• plugins
• content (media, uploads, files and etc)

Below is a legend/guide:

Once you’ve selected which data to sync to production, click Sync Now

Sync Progress

The screen will immediately move to step 2 called Sync Progress and it’ll show an event logger as to where things are at.

Once complete, click Review to check for any differences between staging and production environments

FAQs

Do I Need to Take a Backup?

No, Staq automatically takes backups of both environments. These are available in Staq Panel > Backups for 1-click restore if needed.

How to Sync Database Before Pushing to Production?

If you need to update themes, plugins, and content without database changes, you can bypass the database sync.

For recent data like orders or form submissions, you may need to export/import the data into staging before syncing the database to production but see above for the solution where you can exclude certain database tables from being overwritten.

Does Deploying a Staging Site Cost Extra?

There’s no direct charge for deploying a staging site. However, the total storage and bandwidth used in aggregate are added to your production site usage. Additional charges depend on your plan’s data allocation.

Can I Create Multiple Staging Environments?

Yes! You have the flexibility to create multiple staging environments with different label names.

Is there Any Difference Between the Live and Staging Resources Allocated?

No. Both staging and production have the same resources. We decided to keep the staging and production environments with the same resources to maintain the quality of our platform and the user experience that you expect and deserve.

The only limitation is that you cannot increase the PHP Workers to exceed that site’s live site’s PHP Workers. If you need to increase PHP Workers in the staging environment, you’ll have to increase it on the production website in order to increase it on the staging environment.

Have certain features inside the staging environment been disabled?

Yes, some features have been disabled. Please see the list of features that have been disabled inside the staging environments:

• Cloudflare CDN
• CloudFront CDN
• AWS S3
  • you cannot upload images to S3
  • HTML output will not serve S3 images
  • WebP images will not show in the HTML output
• WebP image feature inside Staq Cache & Optimizer

Can I resync an existing staging site?

Currently, not at this time but this feature is on the roadmap for 2025. You’re better off deleting the old staging site, and create a new staging environment with our 1-click staging site creation by following the steps above.

By following these steps, you can effectively manage your staging and production environments on Staq, ensuring a smooth transition of updates to your live site.