Staging site
Staging site, in website design, is a website used to assemble, test and review its newer versions before it is moved into production. This phase follows the development phase. The staging phase of the software life-cycle is often tested in an environment (hardware and software) that mirrors that of the production environment. The staging site is often different from the development site, and provides a QA zone that is separate from the development and production environments. Access to it should be restricted.[1]
Normally before deploying an updated version of software to the production environment, the update has been tested in the staging environment. The staging server will resemble the production environment where the clients can do the user acceptance testing activities. Tests on the staging site should be passed before deployment of the system into the production environment.
Services like Pantheon use this, although they are far from the only web host to do so. A web host may also use a separate test environment that will match live.
References
- ↑ "How to Create Staging Environment for a WordPress Site". 21 February 2014. Retrieved 2 April 2014.