Before You Go Live: Why Website Staging Matters
Going live with a website is like a new show opening at the theatre: you’ll want a dress rehearsal before making the grand debut. Luckily, staging offers a kind of backstage area where you can test out what works and what doesn’t, experiment with new ideas, and iron out any problems. That way, you can be sure of polished performance when stepping out in front of that audience. Imagine that you’re a travel writer with your own website and blog. You published the latest update to your homepage a few hours ago but, alas — you’ve only just noticed the embarrassing spelling mistake sat within the main banner. And oh no, what’s this? To make matters worse, the subscribe button for your mailing list seems to have stopped working entirely! Hiccups like this can put a dent in one’s online image, but they’re an easy fix. Most visitors are happy to let it slide. In their eyes, you may remain the chief authority on backpacking in East Asia (even if you can’t spell Angkor Wat correctly). A few visitors might leave playful remarks in the comments section. Worst comes to worst, a certain number will bounce. Let’s scale this up. You’re a local business owner. Each month, you shift a respectable volume of goods to customers all across the UK. Your latest update goes live on a Tuesday morning, but… there’s a glitch. Customers are no longer able to complete their purchases. No sales go through for an agonising 48 hours until the fix is found. This kind of error has the potential to damage customer loyalty and confidence long after it’s been put to bed. At the level of major companies and organisations, a website glitch can have catostrophic consequences. Going live with a broken webpage might pull the plug on a service that thousands (or millions) of users depend on. More than an operational nightmare, this is a potential PR disaster, with possible legal implications. And all of this from one innocent click. Fortunately, there’s a tried and tested way to stop this all from happening. What is Website Staging? A staging site is a behind-the-scenes copy of a website. It’s a private space where you can get updates ready, or try out new things, away from public view. Also known as a test environment, a development site, a sandbox, or simply a test site, the basic principle is the same across pretty much all content management systems (CMS). Most website owners will want to have one. There are times when even the most simple of updates may cause puzzling and unexpected issues. Remember also that your live site is always receiving traffic from visitors; if you make changes while they’re browsing, this can affect their experience. Website staging acts like a secret lab where you can tinker with your site’s design, add new features, or fix bugs without the risk of breaking your live site. You’re free to polish your content and make sure everything is up and running before clicking the update button. How Does Website Staging Work? A staging site is typically created as a subdomain of your website’s main domain, like “staging.yoursite.com”. This subdomain houses a clone of your primary website, along with all its essential components — including files, databases, and configurations. This replication is achieved through various services or plugins, depending on your platform, such as WordPress. Within this staging environment, you have the freedom to experiment with new themes, plugins, and core updates, all without affecting the live site that your visitors interact with. This subdomain is basically your dedicated testing ground, ensuring that any changes made can be thoroughly assessed before going live. The staging process follows a clear sequence: You start by duplicating your live website to create the staging environment. Then, you can make your alterations, update themes, plugins, and test new features without disrupting your live site’s operation. After testing testing to make sure everything works fine within the staging area, it’s then time to deploy the changes to your live site. The process is just a few clicks away and it’s easy to keep everything updated without the stress. Visitors will see the finished product, not a work in progress — so important for making a good impression and keeping visitors coming back. The “Push” for Perfection Pushing is the techie term to describe moving changes from the staging environment to the actual pages the audience sees. Technically speaking, there are two levels: ✓ Simple Push is used for minor tweaks, such as fixing typos or swapping photos—these are quick fixes and don’t typically risk your site’s stability. Casual users would likely refer to this more simply as “publishing” or “posting”. ✓ Advanced Push is for the bigger things, such as new features or changes in theme, that overhaul the look of a site. For example, an online shop might use advanced push to introduce a new checkout interface to users currently shopping, or to switch the entire colour scheme and layout to match a seasonal promotion without disrupting the shopping experience. Stages of Development When teams of developers work together, they tend to stick to quite a structured process. The first phase is called the Local Environment, in which devs work individually to experiment with ideas and start to form a website in a private space. As the website starts to come together, the next step is the Development Environment, which can be hosted online for collaborative work by the team. The Staging Environment, then, is the second-to-last stop for final checks. The staged site can then move to its Live or Production Stage for public viewing. Of course, not all of us are working in a team. With a user-friendly Website Builder or WordPress, it’s never been easier to create great websites fast. Solo users and small businesses can skip the “Local” and “Development” stages and jump right to staging — the key thing is to stage before going
Paying for content? You will be
We’ve written before about the move by some providers to charge for content and suggested that before too long it will become the norm. This week that scenario came another step close with both Apple and Google announcing payment systems for subscription to online content. Apple was first with a service for newspaper, magazine, music and video purchases through its App Store. Apple plan to take a hefty 30 per cent of the subscription charge, but publishers will be able to set prices and subscription length. The move follows an earlier Apple announcement that from 1 April this year in-app subscription methods would need to be adopted, to drive traffic into the iTunes store. The aim was to stop publishers selling subscriptions only via their own websites, thus cutting Apple out of the deal. As a concession the new system will allow publishers to sell app subscriptions through their own websites thus bypassing Apple’s 30 per cent stake – however they will also have to offer subscriptions through Apple from within the app for the same price or less. Following this announcement, Google has launched its own much whispered online payment service for newspaper and magazine content. Google One Pass aims to provide a single point of payment for content across a variety of websites. Publishers will again – like through the Apple system – be able to set their own prices and terms. However, instead of the 30% Apple charge, Google will only take 10 per cent of revenue. Google’s system appears to be the more flexible too with a variety of business models allowed including metered access such as a certain number of visits instead of a specific time period. So with two payment systems in place, backed by two of the biggest names in the online world, the only barrier to more moving to paid content models simply appears to be consumer attitudes. In a tougher economic world, expect a lot more being done by publishers looking to change those attitudes. Have you paid for content yet? Is the move to paid content now inevitable?