Why staging environment

This environment can sometimes be the same as the local environment, depending on the preferred setup and work process. A staging environment is the last step before something goes into production and is visible on the live site.

By using a staging site and testing everything before deploying to a live website, you will be able to eliminate bugs and issues, so they never affect the user. Sometimes this process is referred to as quality assessment QA. For agencies developing websites for clients, a staging site is often used to present the client with the final project for them to do final testing and eventual approval before a launch.

The live environment - also called the production environment - is the final stage and the website that a user will see. If the process of deploying and testing changes is good between your environments, then this version of your website should be without bugs or issues, so you can provide the end-user with a great digital experience. In a staging environment, everything is updated to the latest versions and everything should mirror the live site except for the changes that you just pushed from the development environment.

This enables you to make sure that your new changes will not break anything unexpectedly once you deploy them to your live environment. In a testing environment, this is not necessarily the case, where the environment is less strict on everything having to be updated to match the live environment. Instead of fully testing everything, in a test environment you will be working on assumptions of how things work and instead focus on testing the specific code you are changing.

The benefit of having a test environment is that you can test your changes faster, without having to fully replicate your live environment like you would on a staging site. In the above, we did not include a testing environment, but in some cases, this could be needed on top of the other environments. You should never replace a staging environment with a test environment though, as they serve two different purposes in the deployment process.

Everyone with a website can get a staging environment - and in an ideal world, everyone would have one. By having a staging environment and taking advantage of effective deployment processes you get a long list of advantages. The main advantage is quite simply that you get the chance to test new changes before releasing them on a live website, avoiding any bugs or errors from hurting the user experience.

Whether you need a staging site or not will often depend on how big and complex your website is, as well as how frequently you plan on making major changes. If you are only running a smaller website without major changes planned, then simply using the preview function built into your CMS can be enough. If you plan on adding additional environments, you should remember to look into the costs of setting these up, as you will usually be charged for any new environment you want hosting for.

Of course, that does not apply if you plan on using a local environment for staging. Umbraco Cloud is flexible when it comes to multiple environments and has a built-in deployment tool for handling deployment from one environment to another. If you want to learn more about how deployment works in Umbraco Cloud you can watch the video below.

You can also read more about environments on our Umbraco Cloud pricing page and find the plan that fits to your needs. Umbraco deployment documentation. Deployment from local staging to Cloud. Failing to do so may not protect your new code with a particular host and may lead to increased technical problems further down the line. Staging environments help to ensure quality under a production-like environment by protecting your server from code that was unlikely going to work.

This means that your website should perform much better from the offset with little to no headaches and also maximises budget through unwasted resources.

This may result in improved performance, better customer experience and reduces the risk of downtime. This is especially important for businesses that bring in a large amount of revenue through online sales and would need to be considered carefully. Discover the impact your body language can have on the impression you make at interview. Are your Facebook photo ad creatives looking a bit tired or underperforming?

Read this handy guide on common ad creative mistakes and how to fix them! Initforthe was incorporated in September , while Tomislav Simnett, our Managing Director was at university. Here's the story so far. From increased productivity levels to achieving more with the same amount of people, we discuss the many benefits of an Agile approach to business. Welcome to our new website! If you are an existing member, you will need to reset your password before you can login.

Already a member? Login here. View Profile View More Posts. Add Post. The importance of staging environments data digital hosting magento business. View Profile. View More Posts. So what are the benefits of staging environments? Reducing risk For many businesses, choosing to create a staging environment can be seen as best practice to help minimise the risk of avoiding any unwanted surprises when the new code is published live.

Ensuring quality Staging environments help to ensure quality under a production-like environment by protecting your server from code that was unlikely going to work. Are there any drawbacks? A staging environment is not an exact representative of your production environment and this is important to remember during testing. Depending on how dynamic your code is, you may have specific hard links coded into the site that will need to be considered when moving into production, so not to call back on any production environment.

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Posted by Colnort The Colnort Story. He's a big baseball fan and a small beer nerd. This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful. Strictly Necessary Cookie should be enabled at all times so that we can save your preferences for cookie settings.

If you disable this cookie, we will not be able to save your preferences. This means that every time you visit this website you will need to enable or disable cookies again. How come there are companies who skip staging and push new code straight to production? With the disclaimer that there is no one-size-fits-all development model, here are five reasons to reconsider your staging environment: 1.

Staging environments are expensive If you have a staging environment, it can nearly double your costs. Conclusion So to recap, staging environments are expensive, difficult to get accurate data from, and based on an outdated need. Next Article. The Fastest Way to Why. Eliminate the detective work of searching logs for the Cause of critical issues.

Resolve issues in minutes. Code auto-deploys here once a pull request is approved, and is hit with a battery of tests. These tests are designed to be evil, apply edge cases, and put the code through its paces. I lovingly refer to this stage as Thunderdome. The point is to introduce code that can handle known-unknowns to the unknown-unknowns of real user behavior.

Set your code free with the confidence that you did all you could. Make sure everyone can roll back quickly and safely. Does this pipeline seem exhausting and tedious? Caring about your cashflow means caring about your users means caring about the stability of your platform. If you invest in a solid, sleek, and maintained staging environment, you are one very big step closer to making this a reality.

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