Maintainn Is Now SiteCare.

Yes. The rumors are true. The company that was once our WordPress maintenance and support division has now joined the SiteCare family. You can read the official announcement on SiteCare’s website.

Last week on July 20th, Maintainn customers were informed of this acquisition and transition. Yesterday, the announcement went public.

The WP Minute broke the news with an exclusive interview featuring WebDevStudios CEO, Brad Williams, and SiteCare COO, Ryan Sullivan. WPTavern picked up the story later in the day, too.

WordPress acquisitions are happening all around. While the departure of Maintainn from our group of companies is bittersweet, the change allows for WebDevStudios to focus on large-scale website development.

We know we’re leaving Maintainn customers in good, solid hands.

Recap of WordCamp Montclair

We reported last month about Account Manager Laura Byrne’s involvement with WordCamp Montclair, as a co-organizer. However, later, both Laura and Mike Auteri, also a WordCamp Montclair co-organizer, were featured on Torque’s Social Hour to give a full recap of the first in-person WordCamp in the US in the past two years.

You can watch the full interview below.

The Next WordPress Event…

Find WebDevStudios at WordCamp US in San Diego, September 9-11. Of course, Brad will be there, but so will Laura, who is volunteering at the event, Justin Foell, Engineering Manager, and Laura Coronado, Marketing Strategist.

WebDevStudios Is Hiring!

That rumor is true, too. As WebDevStudios focuses on complex development projects that range from multisite networks for large media companies to headless setups for eCommerce corporations, we need some talented technologists to help us meet our client’s requirements. Take a look at our Careers page and submit your application online today.

The post Company News – July appeared first on WebDevStudios.

Special Offer on WordPress Support

Our WordPress maintenance and support company, Maintainn, is currently offering a special on WordPress support hours. If you’re looking to have a few one-off tasks tackled, such as adding a contact form, now is the time to take advantage of this promotion.

Head over to Maintainn’s blog for all the details on Back to Business. Limitations apply. Hurry! This offer ends September 10th.

In the Loop Podcast

Frontend Engineer, Lauren Pittenger, was featured as a panel member for a discussion about using WordPress in an agency setting for “In the Loop.” During the conversation, Lauren says her best advice for developers working at an agency is to stay up to date on current technology. Listen to the full podcast episode at Anchor.fm for more tips and WordPress news.

Video Interviews

Both Senior Frontend Engineer, JC Palmes, and WDS CEO, Brad Williams, were featured guests for live video events this month. Firstly, Mozilla Philippines Community conducted an interview with JC to talk about WordPress and using the technology as a website platform.

In her guest appearance, JC lists out popular websites that rely on the power of WordPress, talks about the latest version of WordPress, including full-site editing, and goes over some the blocks available to help customize WordPress. You can still watch the entire interview on Facebook.

On the same day as JC’s live video interview, Brad was featured on “The Torque Social Hour.” This weekly video livestream covers WordPress news and events. During Brad’s appearance, he addressed recent changes with plugin names and the uproar created because of it, NFTs, and the current state of WordCamps and WordPress conferences. Watch Brad’s appearance below.

Twitter Spaces

Brad couldn’t get enough with his appearance on “The Torque Social Hour” because just a couple of days later, he hosted his first Twitter Space WordPress event. During our most recent Five for the Future Friday, Brad kicked off a Twitter Space to discuss the latest in WordPress news and happenings.

It was so interesting and exciting, Brad is hosting another Twitter Spaces event this Friday, September 3, 2021 at 1:00 p.m. Eastern. Before you head out for a long Labor Day weekend, be sure to log into Twitter and join Brad’s Twitter Space.

Pro tip: if you’re hoping to verbally join in the discussion, tune in via your phone, not desktop, and tap on the ‘Request’ microphone icon. Twitter Spaces limits the availability of certain features on desktop. For example, you can listen but not request to speak.

Upcoming Events

There are still more things to look forward to in September. WPMRR Virtual Summit takes place September 21st-23rd, and the event focuses on establishing, maintaining, and achieving success with monthly recurring revenue.

Brad is a featured panelist for a roundtable centering around WordPress maintenance. Details will be announced soon, but be sure to add this virtual summit to your calendar. Visit WPMRR.com to register.

Another event to keep on your radar is WebOps 2021. This event is for WordPress professionals, and while we don’t have any WDS team members speaking at the conference we have some who will be in attendance. Register at Pantheon.io/webops-21.

WebDevStudios is hiring!

Wouldn’t it be cool to work at a WordPress agency where coworkers are featured guests on various media outlets and the CEO hosts Twitter Spaces events? WebDevStudios is hiring. We invite you to look at our Careers page, find a position that fits your skillset, and apply today.

The post Company News – August appeared first on WebDevStudios.

“As a support engineer, I’ll help our customers implement new features and think through challenging issues. So I’m looking forward to the interesting problems and, hopefully, elegant solutions we come up with in the future,” Tanner explains his new job role and goals, “I hope to bring a unique perspective that helps the Maintainn team be more efficient with our time and resources.”

It was when Tanner built a website for his own business in high school that he came to the conclusion working with the web would be a more fulfilling career. So, he focused on working freelance and building WordPress plugins. Tanner says he is fascinated by technology and how it can be used to improve people’s efficiency.

“There’s a strong connection between technology, efficiency, and problem solving,” Tanner elaborates. “I love that I get to share that connection with our customers daily, whether through implementing a new feature on a home page or fixing a bug that has been bothering them for months. Seeing people excited about how technology simplifies their life is the highlight of my job.”

For years, Tanner had been keeping his eye on WebDevStudios (WDS), impressed by our team. “I looked up to the engineers’ quality and the code they contributed to the WordPress community,” Tanner says. “When I decided it was time to take the next step in my career, naturally, WDS was at the top of my list.

So far, the onboarding process for Tanner has been a success and he’s blending in with the rest of us, as though he’s been here the whole time. “Of all the onboarding I’ve gone through, WDS has been the smoothest!” exclaims Tanner. “Whenever I had a question, there was always someone available to help out or find someone who had the answer. It’s only been about three weeks in my new role, and everyone treats me like I’ve been here for years. The community here is remarkable and inspiring.”

If you’re interested in joining a community of people who enjoy their jobs, give back to WordPress monthly, and hand out tacos for going above and beyond, take a look at our current job openings and apply online today.

The post Get to Know Our Newest Support Engineer appeared first on WebDevStudios.

Job Title: Support Engineer

Years at WebDevStudios: 8

My move into working for WebDevStudios (WDS) was a very swift transition in September 2012. If memory serves me right, on a Saturday or maybe Sunday, I was tipped off that WDS was hiring by a then-employee and he encouraged me to apply.

The next day, I sent in my resume. I believe Monday I had an interview with our CEO, Brad Williams, over Skype, and by Tuesday I had the job offer. It was something close to that, for sure, and I was happy to leave freelancing in favor of steadier work. I’ve been here ever since.

As I sit here reflecting about the past eight years, I’m realizing that I’ve had a finger firmly on the pulse of support for WebDevStudios, almost from the start. By “support,” I mean a different type than what a typical agency provides a client. That support is most definitely important, especially for maintaining long-working relationships. The support I’ve been involved in, though, has been a mix of long-term relationships along with one-offs or momentary needs.

Plugin Support

WebDevStudios had developed some plugins during the early years. Most notable is Custom Post Type UI (CPTUI), with Brad having good foresight that user-registered custom post types and custom taxonomies were going to be BIG for the WordPress community. He jumped on that pretty early on, and CPTUI emerged as a forerunner in opening up those possibilities.

WDS also developed various other plugins that were also published on WordPress.org over time. However, there’s only so much time in the day, and running a business takes up a lot of that time. This limited Brad, and whomever else may have been asked, to handle incoming support requests for those published plugins.

I was actually fairly active in the official WordPress Internet Relay Chat (IRC) channel, which is an available avenue for general WordPress support even in 2020. It was in there that I believe Brad saw a natural knack I had for helping others. He also knew that public perception was incredibly important, and on the plugin front we weren’t doing so hot. By the spring of 2013, I was dubbed the “plugin czar.” Not only did I take on the responsibility of handling all of the incoming support requests for ALL of our free plugins, but I also took on the continued development of them.

While I haven’t called myself the plugin czar much since, the role is still very much a part of my workday. I primarily make sure that the support threads are responded to and helped in as timely of a manner as I can. If serious bugs or security issues arise, I address and release fixes as quick as possible. As time and schedule permit, I also try to work on new features, but that is usually not as actively handled daily. Sometimes, a solid, stable plugin that does its job well is better than a constantly moving plugin.

Regardless, every day I’m checking both RSS feeds and email notification for the support forums that I’m tasked with monitoring. These two methods help me make sure I am keeping an eye on new activity for each plugin. On top of that, I also manage and monitor any communication provided through GitHub, where we publicly host all of the source code for our free plugins. A majority of the open issues are probably created by me to help track ideas from both myself, as well as users suggestions, but users are able to contribute their own, and I respond there, as well.

Maintainn

WebDevStudios realized that they wanted to take an active role in not only helping clients release awesome websites but also maintain longer-term relationships with them well after project completion. The idea of, “Hello, get the work done, goodbye!” was not enough. Why not move a client internally to a different part of WDS to keep that relationship going?

Enter Maintainn, a WordPress support company that was started by Shayne Sanderson to provide ongoing and routine support for various sized clients, who wanted help keeping their sites updated, backed up, secured, and have custom development managed. WDS acquired Maintainn to not only continue helping those smaller website owners, but also provide a branch of the company that the agency-level clients could also rely on, after the initial project build is finished.

Once again, Brad approached me with the idea of moving me away from the agency side of WebDevStudios and put me on the Maintainn team. I agreed to the move. At the start, I was also helping out with AppPresser support when WebDevStudios still had a hand in that product, and I began splitting my time essentially three ways: plugins support, AppPresser support, and now Maintainn support.

Did I mention I can do support?

With Maintainn, I’ve done practically everything at one point or another. Whether it be the small quick-ish requests from clients, to larger feature requests for major functionality, to the grunt work of applying available updates each week, checking on security scans or reported vulnerabilities, and making sure backups are running like expected.

Today, though, my primary focus is less on the routine maintenance tasks, and more on the support requests. On a given day, I will be reviewing new requests to evaluate what is being asked for, what needs to be done to achieve that, and how much time I think it’s going to take. Some tasks are going to be pretty quick and require less than 30 minutes. Sometimes, the requests are considerably large and could range in the 20-30 hour range. It really depends on what is being requested.

I would easily say that a good portion of my Maintainn day is communication, both internally and with the clients. I’m checking my email for notifications from our various tools used by Maintainn, communicating internally with our project managers and my fellow developers, and communicating with the clients about their requests. Once estimates have received official approval, I then go heads-down on the task to begin fulfilling the request and hopefully making a happy client. I wrote a behind-the-scenes look at my role at Maintainn on our blog. Take a peek.

Pluginize

Pluginize definitely scratches the itch I have for being part of a product team. I love the idea of being able to develop the tools that help the web developers help their clients. Pluginize is also an extension of the plugin support role that I’ve had for years, but on the premium product level. As you may have guessed by now, I am also tapped to be the primary support person there. My day-to-day dealings with Pluginize include handling support tickets that come in through our ticketing system, whether it be a pre-sale question about one of the products, technical support for an issue someone is having, or if they just aren’t happy with the product and want a refund.

I also get to help continue evolving the premium products, develop new features, handle any bugs or security issues in the code, and manage new releases. Between the free plugins support and Pluginize, if you’ve ever reached out to WDSs for questions about our plugins or products, chances are you’ve had at least some feedback come from me, which I think is pretty awesome.

Constant Contact

The last proverbial hoodie I wear at WebDevStudios is the role I play with our ongoing relationship with Constant Contact. You can read more about at Success Story: Constant Contact Forms Plugin for WordPress.

This product/project has evolved and changed over time, but one thing that has managed to stay pretty consistent is my involvement with it. With that, I have a lot of contextual knowledge about how things were and are now with these plugins. This is also a different type of scratched itch, as it’s also a product, but not one that is owned by WDS.

Much like our other products and plugins, this is also one that I do a lot of forum and troubleshooting support for, as well as gather user feedback for what we’re doing well, what we’re doing not so well, and ideas to pass along to Constant Contact for how we could make the product better.

This helps Constant Contact with a more robust and solid product which helps them with their customers. I think I also benefit because at least temporarily, I get to put myself into a different pair of shoes where I need to think like a marketer and try to determine things that would be important for someone in that type of role. Because I’m on the frontlines, I am often also participating in the annual meetings with the client to help outline future roadmaps and plan for new releases.

After the work day is over…

2020 is a year that will go down in various levels of infamy, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t have my habits and hobbies away from my work computer, although those were definitely slowed by our pandemic. When I’m not at my work computer, chances are you will see me in one of a few various places.

First up is some local gyms. I recall it vividly, the moments when I decided that enough was enough, and it was time for a change. September 2015, right after WDS Camp 2015 in Wisconsin, I started seeing some event photos, including ones that had myself in them, and I realized what physical state I was in.

Mentally, I thought I was doing alright, even when I looked at myself in the mirror. Somehow, the event photos told me a different, more realistic story. In short, I decided it was high time to start going to the gym, and be serious about it too.

Since that September, I’ve regularly worked with a trainer multiple times a week and eventually participated in group classes, as well. All this time and effort has turned around many aspects of my life. They say it’s not a diet or a brief habit; it’s a significant life change in how you live. I have to agree. Five years later, I’m not quite to where I’d like to be (hi, abs, wherever you are), but I know I’m continually doing much better than I was before.

The second, and slightly more random place you’ll find me when away from my work computer, is one of various coffee shops around town, often with a book in hand. At the tail end of 2017, and the first part of January 2018, I noted that I didn’t do much book reading. Not only that, I wanted to actively change this, as well. It was at that point that my personal weekend reading challenge began.

The challenge is simple. Every weekend, regardless of where I am, I would read at least ONE page from an actual book. I am proud to say that the weekend streak continues to this day, and I have not missed a single weekend, as of the time of this writing. I’m not sure at the moment exactly what my grand total book and/or page count is, but I do recall the book that I started off with—The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien.

Beyond that, I also fill my time with movies, TV, and podcasts. It’s easy to say that time is filled pretty well. And that, my friends and readers, is a pretty good idea about a day in my life with WebDevStudios and Maintainn, as a Support Engineer.

The post WebDevStudios Day in the Life of a Support Engineer appeared first on WebDevStudios.

wd_s Theme Generator New Look

Take a look at the makeover our design team gave our wd_s theme generator.

“The previous look was very dated,” explains Cameron Campbell, Creative Lead, “And I wanted to add some content to point users to the Github repo if they have questions or want to contribute to wd_s.”

Got an upcoming WordPress project? Consider using wd_s.
 
 
 
 

CPT UI Security Release

We just released Custom Post Type UI (CPT UI) 1.7.4. This version addresses a reported security vulnerability around its tooling and migration functionality. We’d like to express gratitude to WDS Support Engineer, Michael Beckwith, who handled this update.

Is your WordPress website among the 800,000+ with an active installation of CPT UI? It’s time to update now! Interested in a WordPress plugin that provides an easy-to-use interface for registering and managing custom post types and taxonomies. Check out CPT UI.

PluginMadness

Speaking of CPT UI, did you know we made it to Round 3 of Torque Magazine’s yearly bracket-style competition known as PluginMadness? Help us make it to Round 4 by voting for CPT UI in Matchup 5.

March Support Program Madness

The madness continues with with a special offer on WordPress support hours that ends on April 3rd. Right now, you will receive one free hour of WordPress support for every five hours you purchase.

“We’ve run similar Support Program promotions in the past, and they have been very popular with our small-to-medium-sized business clients,” says Jim Byrom, Director of Client Services. “While the theme for our latest promotion is now null and void due to the cancellation of the basketball tournament, the mission remains the same. With a small investment in our service, we’re here to help ensure our clients’ success while also giving them a little bonus on top to help with their bottom line.”
 
 
 
Use discount code madness2020 to take advantage of free WordPress support hours. Get more details on Maintainn’s blog.

The post WebDevStudios Company News – March appeared first on WebDevStudios.

[0] => Survey Your Requirements

When migrating your WordPress website and choosing your next host, some things worth considering are:

• How many users you have or expect to have
• What level of support you require via email, live chat, or phone
• Where you are hosting your email

Traffic

Be cautious with budget hosts (typically, $8 per month) that advertise UNLIMITED bandwidth or traffic. While cheap vendors might be sufficient for small blogs, often several thousands of websites are being hosted on the same server, fighting over the same system resources, which can result in slower speeds for more complex websites.

If your website is critical to your business success, it’s best to go with a company that allocates service by visitor count and typically starts with pricing around $29 per month. Often, when choosing a host based on metered traffic, your website is hosted on faster servers with a minimum guarantee of system resources.

Support

While a 99.99% uptime guarantee is typical of most modern-day hosts, in reality, things go wrong that can’t be expected. When choosing a vendor, always look for what ways you can reach out to support. While paying more for your hosting may not be fun, having phone or live chat support in the middle of a crisis can save you countless hours, rather than waiting for a reply by email.

Email

While this does not directly impact the performance of your website, often when purchasing hosting from budget hosting providers like GoDaddy or Host Gator, you also receive email hosting as part of your hosting price. When migrating to a specialized WordPress host, often they do not provide email services at all. In that case, consider budgeting $6 per month per email address for hosting your email with Google App for business.

[1] => Backup, Backup, Backup

Now that you know where you are migrating your WordPress website to, it is time to make a backup of your website. Depending on your size and budget, there are a lot of great choices on the market with some detailed below, in no particular order. When backing up your website, it is vitally important that you back up not only your website files but also a copy of your database.

Backup Solutions

• ManageWP is an affordable tool to backup and manage multiple websites at once. You can request backups manually or set up a timed interval to backup monthly, weekly, daily, or hourly.
• UpdraftPlus offers a robust free option as well as options to backup on a timed interval. One major plus to this plugin is the ability to backup to Google Drive, Dropbox, and Amazon S3.
• BackupBuddy  offers the ability to backup your entire website to remote locations on a timed interval, just like the previously mentioned options. However, one thing that is unique to this plugin is its ability to restore and optimize your database.

[2] => Set Up Your New Host

At this point, you should have a list of host requirements and your website backed up. Now, it’s time to buy your new hosting service. When selecting your host, it’s worth checking to see if they offer migration services during checkout. Often, migrating a WordPress website is included free with annual plans or made available for a one-time setup fee.

Having your host migrate your website might be a good option to consider if you are not comfortable with the technical aspects of setting up your new hosting environment. If you are still undecided on who to choose for hosting, consider using our WordPress maintenance, support, and hosting company, Maintainn. Maintainn’s hosting includes migrating your WordPress website, along with top-notch support, blazing fast hosting, and affordable pricing.

Note: If your new host is providing your migration services, feel free to skip to step 05 Setup Backups.

[3] =>  Upload Your Backup

Note: For demonstration purposes, we will be showing how to set up your hosting in a DreamHost shared account; however, your chosen host’s interface may be different. If you have any questions on any steps, reaching out to your host’s QA and support will be your best first step.

Set Up Your Domain

In order to upload our website backup, we must first create a domain record for it. Under manage domains, click Add Hosting to a Domain / Sub-Domain.

Next, enter your site’s domain. In our case, the website’s URL is holyfaithpsl.showing.work. You can choose to have “www” added to your website, but for our example, we won’t. After you are happy with your domain settings, scroll to the bottom of the page and click the Fully host this domain button.

Next, since we are not going to have Dreamhost manage our DNS, we need to get the IP address for the server on which our site is now provisioned. Back under the Manage Domains page of your account, click on DNS under the domain name we just created. Scroll to the bottom of the page and record the IP address for the A record next to the domain name; in our case, we were assigned 67.205.10.79. Record this for later.

Import Database

Now it’s time to create a database for our site. Click on MySQL Database under the More header and use the following steps to define your new database. Ensure you record the database name, user, and password you defined for later.

1. Enter desired database name.
2. Select Create a new hostname now…
3. Select your domain and use mysql as the subdomain.
4. Under user, select Create a new user now…
5. Enter desired username.
6. Enter desired password.
7. Confirm password.
8. Finally, click Add new database now!

With our database created on the MySQL Databases page, click on phpMyAdmin next to the database we just created above.

Once you log in to phpMyAdmin, click on Import. In the importer upload the .sql file exported from your backup and click Go. That’s it for our database!

Upload Files

Now it’s time to upload the site files themselves. Under FTP & SSH Users > Manage Users, find the domain you registered and click Manage Files.

Now that you are in the WebFTP view, simply upload your website backup files (not your database).

Lastly, it’s time to update our wp-config.php with the database we created earlier. Right click on wp-config.php and click Edit. With the wp-config.php open, scroll down to your ‘DB_NAME’, ‘DB_USER’, ‘DB_PASSWORD’, and ‘DB_HOST” section and update with the information we recorded earlier.

Note: Most hosts require the DB_HOST be set to localhost; Dream Host, however, requires this be the specific subdomain we made earlier.

[4] => Update Your DNS

The last step to bringing our website online is updating our domain to point to our new hosting provider. From the IP address we recorded earlier, log into your domain DNS control panel and create an A record to point to the IP address we recorded in the step before.

Congratulations! Your website is now migrated to your new hosting server.

[5] => Set Up Backups

Although your hosting provider may provide incremental backups for your website, it is always recommended to set up at least one other third-party backup solution for your website. In the event your host experiences any downtimes or data loss, you can never have too many backups. One of the easiest ways is to use ManageWP, which will back up your website to their third-party servers starting at only $2 per month.

 

The post 5 Steps to Migrating Your WordPress Site appeared first on WebDevStudios.

Meet Christina Workman, who has joined WDS as a Support Technician for Maintainn. She is responsible for keeping client websites online, up-to-date, and secure.

“The onboarding process has been great! There’s a bit of a learning curve, but everyone at WDS is welcoming, friendly, supportive and encouraging,” reports Christina, “I truly feel like I’m being set up to succeed.” Before joining WDS, Christina developed WordPress websites for small and micro businesses and provided maintenance, general support, and training.

“I love working with WordPress and being a part of the WordPress community,” she explains. “I’ve been freelancing for about 10 years now and decided it was time to become part of something bigger.” Christina was familiar with WDS and when she noticed the job posting, it really resonated with her. “I get to work within my skillset, continue to expand those skills AND work with a great bunch of people who also give back to the WordPress community. Who could say no to that?!”

Christina is very active in the WordPress community, organizing WordPress Meetups, WordCamps and KidsCamp. In her spare time, she enjoys hanging out with her family, taking her two dogs to the dog park, trying different kinds of tea, and watching BritTV. She is excited about her journey at WDS and Maintainn, saying, “There’s so much to look forward to! I think to sum it up in a word: opportunities. The opportunities to help clients, to contribute to WDS, to learn from my colleagues, to be involved in the community.”

Would you like to be like Christina and join our team? We’re hiring! Take a look at our Careers page and find an opportunity that’s a fit for you.

The post Team WDS Just Keeps Growing! appeared first on WebDevStudios.

“All my talks are inspired by knowledge I learn the previous year,” says Meagan. “The most impactful thing I’ve learned as a part of Maintainn is the importance of having a staging site. I’m happy to be able to share what I’ve learned so that those who attend my class are able to create their own staging sites and perform their updates safely.”

Attendees can expect to learn all aspects of creating and using a staging website. “Attending my talk will empower you with actual tangible next steps on how to create your own staging site, how to safely perform and test your updates, and how to roll those updates out to your live site,” Meagan explains, adding, “The number-one reason websites are hacked is because of outdated files—no longer will your websites be at risk.”

Because this WordPress conference lasts just a single day, eliminating the usual second, more relaxed day when attendees can network with one another and chat up speakers, Meagan encourages WordCamp Hamilton attendees to make the most of the day. Don’t throw away your shot!

“This can be challenging and overwhelming for folks with introverted tendencies, like me, but it’s important to put yourself out there, ask questions, listen to stories, and make some new friends and work buddies during the WordCamp itself,” explains Meagan.

Aside from Meagan’s talk, other presentations to consider attending include “How to Keep Your Clients Engaged, Excited and On Track Through Their Website Project,” by Jessica St. Peter and “WordPress for Visual Artists,” by Ben Dunkle, one of Meagan’s favorite speakers.

See the full WordCamp Hamilton schedule here. Keep up with all the activity by following WordCamp Hamilton on Twitter and the hashtag #WCHamOnt. And if you see Meagan, don’t be shy. Say hi!

The post Not Throwing Away Our Shot! Catch WDS at WordCamp Hamilton appeared first on WebDevStudios.

Not a literal stage!

The answer is to set up what is known as a staging, or development site. What is that you ask? It’s a duplicate copy of your existing site that is located in a place that visitors are not going to know about, and not be able to access. This will allow you and others to develop and revise the website safely without risk of real visitors knowing anything is going on.

When I should get a staging site?

In February 2015, Google posted an article about finding more mobile-friendly search results. This meant that they would favor mobile-friendly websites over non-mobile friendly websites starting later that spring. If you had been holding out on making your website more responsive, Google’s announcement may have been a good kick in the pants to get started. No one wants to lose their search ranking, and we do not want to see you lose that either! Having a staging copy of your website allows you to make your current theme mobile friendly (or replace your website’s theme with one that already is). Both aren’t quick changes, so allowing your users to see the current site while you do the work benefits everyone.

Some other examples of times where you would want to consider a staging site include:

• When making any template file or style changes, responsive or not
• When doing upgrades of WordPress core or plugins, especially between major versions. This helps prevent white screens
• User testing of new features

There are many more reasons, but these are just some common times using a staging site benefits you in a big way.

How do I go about acquiring this copy?

This is a good question, and the solution will depend on certain things. The first question to ask is if your hosting provider has any staging management already provided. If you are hosted through WPEngine or SiteGround for example, then you have easy staging management already. Other hosting providers may vary.

If you are not hosted through either of those, you are not out of luck, but there will be more required steps. It is possible to have a subdomain or alternate domain created to host the copy of the staging site. The only real difference would be amount of work needed to have it created.

If you would like to minimize the manual work required and have no problem with the staging site being hosted by a third party, a plugin/service like WP Stagecoach is a viable option for you. It is a premium service, but from the looks of it, they would be worth the annual fee.

If you are looking for an extensive how-to that does not rely on third parties, check out a more extensive post over at the Maintainn blog. You can always just hire Maintainn to help you out as well.

We have the copied site created, now what?

This is the point where the real work starts. All people involved in the desired work are going to be able to make changes and test things out and get it all ready for the eventual release on the live site without worry.

Once all the changes have been made and verified to cause no major issues, the changes need to be uploaded and implemented on the live site. This will include importing or re-implementing any changes for database content, as well as uploading changed files via (s)ftp or, if you are lucky, merging the changes into the production branch of your version control. Once that is done, any caches should be flushed so that users will receive the labors of your hard work.

What should I keep in mind with a staging site?

The primary thing to keep in mind is access by those who should not have it. This includes more than just people. You don’t want search engine spiders to be crawling the site as well, as you will risk having duplicate content indexed, which is not good in their eyes.

Enabling password access will be a big step in preventing both from occurring. There are WordPress plugins available for this as well as server-level configuration options.

You will also want to disable any caching you have available for your site while working on changes. This will make it easier to see what you have done and keep development swift.

If you have any questions, let us know in the comment section below.

The post Staging Websites for Safe Development appeared first on WebDevStudios.

Read more about Maintainn’s update over on their blog, and hey, don’t take my word for how fantastic the new site looks–give it a glimpse yourself!

The post Maintainn Gets a Refresh! appeared first on WebDevStudios.