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What is a staging environment?
Is the extra effort worth it?
Often agencies or hosting providers state that a staging environment is available. Sometimes they charge extra for it – but what is a staging environment and what do you need it for?
Staging environment - definition
A staging environment is a copy of the original environment in which a website or online store runs. For this purpose, the data is copied from the original environment. Often a subdomain is created for this purpose, likehttps://staging.mein-shop.de, and extensive testing can be done there.
Why is a staging environment important?
A web server is a complex environment consisting of hundreds of programs. The online store or website is installed here and then optimized exactly for this environment. This also often means installing certain plugins to customize the online store, or website, exactly to the owner’s needs.
When a new version of a plugin or even the online store is released, everything can be tested in the staging environment to ensure smooth operation. If no tests take place, every update is a gamble.
What happens in the staging environment?
All things that affect the website or online store are tested here. Plugins, as well as the store, need certain requirements to work correctly. A famous example is PHP. PHP is a programming language that can be used to execute scripts. With the help of variables, complex web pages can be enabled. So you fill your database with the article data and the online store creates with PHP in each case the same looking pages, which are displayed to a visitor.
It often happens that plugins or even the whole online store system does not work with every PHP version. Sometimes only a certain version of PHP is incompatible, and as long as you avoid it, the whole system runs fine. To find out something like that, you use staging environments.
Staging environments exist in various scopes. With web servers that you share with others, you usually have several PHP versions (to stay with the example) at your disposal. Depending on the provider, you can create a staging environment and try a different PHP version for this. When creating, all data is copied from the live environment, so that everything is really compiled as in the original.
The advantage here is that everything in the staging environment can be changed. Only when everything is working, the content of the staging environment is copied to the live system. Often, the live system is continuously synchronized with the staging environment so that the staging environment is immediately available when needed. The synchronization is then stopped, the changes are tested and after the successful tests everything is copied back from the staging environment to the live system.
Since the same prerequisites exist on both sides, the probability is very high that all changes will also work as they should in the live system.
If the prerequisites are not the same, they will be adapted or, depending on the system, copied directly from the staging environment.
Online stores with staging environment
At least from Shopware we know that there is a plugin for this. With this plugin, you can simply copy the entire store to a subdirectory, make any changes you want, and then copy the finished entire package back. Thus, new designs are also often tested before they are displayed to the visitor.
Staging environment for your online store
We will be happy to set up a server for you on which your online store and staging environment can function properly. So you don’t have to worry about future updates of your systems, because you can test everything extensively.
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