A staging site is a separate copy of your site that you can use to test changes safely before applying them to your live site. PMPro Hosting offers staging sites, but we do them differently than most hosts.

We do not provide a traditional staging environment that you can push and pull data from. We will create a scrubbed clone of your live site that you can experiment in freely

This page explains what we mean by that, why we approach staging this way, and how to request a staging clone for your live site.

Our Approach to Staging

Most managed hosts pitch staging as a one-click clone of your live site that you can push back to production when you are ready. That works fine for marketing sites and blogs. It does not work for membership sites, and the way most hosts handle it can put real customer data at risk.

For Paid Memberships Pro sites, we offer something different:

A scrubbed, isolated clone of your live site. Your code, your theme, your plugins, your content all preserved. Member data, payment gateway connections, and email delivery all removed or disconnected. The clone never syncs back to your live site. It is a safe space to test things, not a second copy of your real business.

We call this a “forever out of sync but safe” environment. You make changes in staging, you confirm they work, and then you make those same changes on your live site. The two environments stay independent.

Why We Do Not Do Traditional Staging

A typical staging site for a marketing blog is a copy of your WordPress files and database. Push it back to live, and your latest content edits replace whatever was on the live site. That is fine for a site where the database is mostly your own work.

A membership site is different. Your live database contains:

• Real member accounts and login credentials
• Active subscription records tied to your payment gateway
• Order history and transaction data
• Personal information your members trusted you with

If you push staging back to live, you overwrite all of that with whatever stale data was in your staging copy. New members who signed up since you cloned the site disappear. Active subscriptions get out of sync with what your gateway is actually charging. Orders vanish.

This is not a hypothetical. It is the predictable result of treating a membership database like a marketing database.

Pulling from live to staging has its own problems. You now have a second copy of every member’s email, billing address, and account history sitting on a different server. If your staging site is compromised, that data is exposed. If your staging site has working payment gateway credentials, a test charge in staging could hit a real member’s card.

What a PMPro Hosting Staging Clone Is

A staging clone is a separate WordPress installation on a staging URL (like staging-yourdomain.pmpro.site) that mirrors your live site’s code and content but with sensitive data removed.

You can use a staging clone to:

• Test plugin and theme updates before applying them to live
• Try out a new Add On or feature configuration
• Review or edit custom code in your child theme or a customization plugin.
• Troubleshoot a problem without risk to your live members
• Experiment with design or layout changes

You cannot use a staging clone to:

• Test live checkouts (the gateway is disconnected)
• Build up content or member data and then sync it back to live
• Run as a true mirror of live traffic

Your staging clone is a snapshot in time. The moment we create it, it begins drifting from your live site. New members signing up on live will not appear in staging. Content you publish on live will not appear in staging. That is by design.

What Gets Scrubbed vs. Preserved

When we create your staging clone, we copy everything from your live site and then make the following changes to the staging copy:

Preserved (Identical to Live)

• WordPress core, themes, plugins (including any custom plugins or child themes)
• Posts, pages, custom post types, and media library
• Site settings and Paid Memberships Pro configuration
• Membership levels and level settings
• Custom code in your custom theme or child theme and your customizations plugin

Scrubbed or Modified

Member Accounts: Real member accounts are removed or anonymized. The administrator account you use to log in is preserved.

Payment Gateway: Live gateway credentials are removed. The site is set to a sandbox or test mode so any checkout attempts cannot reach your real gateway.

Outgoing Email: Email sending is disabled on staging. Password resets, membership confirmations, and admin notifications will not actually deliver. This protects your members from receiving accidental emails from a test environment.

Search Engine Visibility: The “Discourage search engines from indexing this site” option is enabled in Settings > Reading. Your staging URL will not show up in search results.

Caching: Page caching and object caching are reviewed and may be configured differently on staging to make testing easier.

How to Request a Staging Clone

Staging clones are not self-service. We provision them on request so we can verify your droplet has the resources to host one and so we can scrub the data correctly.

To request a staging clone, open a support ticket and let us know:

• Your domain (the live site you want cloned)
• What you plan to test (this helps us decide if any extra setup is needed)
• Whether you want the clone for a specific limited time, or kept available ongoing

Our team will:

1. Confirm your droplet can support a staging site alongside your live site.
2. Create the clone at a staging URL.
3. Run the scrubbing steps described above.
4. Send you the staging URL and confirm your administrator login works.

Most staging clones are ready within one business day.

Using Your Staging Clone

Once your staging clone is ready, you log in the same way you log in to your live site. Your administrator credentials work on both.

Testing Plugin or Theme Updates

This is the most common reason customers request staging clones. The workflow:

1. Log in to your staging site.
2. Run the plugin or theme updates you want to test.
3. Click through your site as a logged-in administrator. Visit the homepage, the membership levels page, the account page, and any custom pages.
4. Try a sandbox checkout if the update touches payment functionality. The gateway is disconnected, so no real charge will be attempted.
5. Once you are satisfied, run the same updates on your live site.

If something breaks on staging, you have not affected your live site. Roll back the update on staging, contact support, or work through the issue at your own pace.

Viewing or Editing Custom Code

If you have a customizations plugin, child theme, or custom code in a custom theme’s functions.php, your staging clone has all of the same files. You can:

• Browse the code through the WordPress admin (if file editing is enabled, which on PMPro Hosting it is not by default for security reasons)
• Connect via SFTP and pull the files down to your computer for review
• Make edits on staging, test them, and then apply the same edits to live

For SFTP access to your staging site, the same SSH key you use for your live site works. If you need to set up SFTP from a new computer, see SSH Access.

Trying New Add Ons or Features

Install the Add On on staging first. Configure it. Click through the parts of your site it touches. Once you are confident it works the way you expect, install and configure it on live.

Refreshing Your Staging Clone

Because staging clones do not sync with live, the gap between the two grows over time. New posts, new members, new orders, plugin updates you ran on live but not on staging: all of these accumulate.

When you want a fresh starting point, contact support and ask for a staging refresh. We will rebuild the clone from your current live site and re-run the scrubbing steps.

There is no automated schedule for this. Refresh when you need to, not on a calendar.

Removing Your Staging Clone

If you no longer need your staging clone, contact support and we will remove it. This frees up the resources on your droplet and removes the staging URL.

You can request a new clone any time later.

Resource Considerations

A staging clone runs on the same droplet as your live site by default. That means it shares the CPU, memory, and disk space your live site is using. For most PMPro Hosting customers, this is fine. The staging site is idle most of the time and only sees traffic when you are actively testing.

If your live site is large or runs close to its resource limits, hosting a staging clone on the same droplet may not be a good idea. In those cases we will work with you on options, which may include provisioning a separate droplet for staging. We will discuss any cost or configuration implications before making changes.

Frequently Asked Questions