How to push a WordPress staging site without overwriting the database

Managing a WordPress site often involves using a staging environment for testing new features, themes, or plugin updates before rolling them out to the live site. Staging sites are safe playgrounds for making significant changes without risking the functionality of your live website. However, one of the trickiest tasks is pushing updates from a staging site to the live site without overwriting the live database.

The live database often contains essential user data, like customer information, orders, comments, and content updates that you don’t want to lose. In this blog post, we will explore the best practices, tools, and strategies for safely pushing a WordPress staging site to live without overwriting the database.

Why you shouldn’t overwrite the database

The live database is where your site’s dynamic content resides, including posts, comments, order history, and user profiles. The staging database is typically used to test new updates, but if you overwrite the live database with the one from staging, it could lead to catastrophic data loss. Important transactions, user information, and other critical data may be lost forever if not handled properly.

Some common examples of why overwriting the database is risky:

• E-commerce websites: If you’re running an online store, the live database is the heart of your operations. It holds order records, customer profiles, and purchase history. Overwriting this data could result in lost sales and irretrievable customer information.
• Membership or subscription-based websites: If users are regularly signing up or engaging with content, overwriting the database could delete new member data, subscriptions, or updates made since the staging environment was created.

For these reasons, it’s crucial to only push changes from the staging site related to files—like themes, plugins, or media uploads—while leaving the live database untouched.

How to push changes without overwriting the database

1. Start with a backup

Before starting any push from staging to live, the first rule is to always create a full backup of both your live and staging sites. Should anything go wrong, you can restore your site with minimal downtime. Many hosting providers like SiteGround, WP Engine, and Kinsta offer automated backups. You can also use plugins like UpdraftPlus, Duplicator, or BackWPup for added peace of mind.

Pro tip: Schedule regular automated backups for your live site, especially if you’re frequently making updates. This way, you always have a recent version to fall back on.

2. Understand the difference between files and databases

In WordPress, site files and databases are separate entities. Site files include your themes, plugins, and uploaded media, while the database stores information about your site’s content, users, and settings. Understanding this separation is critical when deciding what to push from staging to live.

Most updates involve:

• Files: Changes to theme design, plugin functionality, or media content.
• Database: Post updates, new users, comments, or other dynamic data.

When pushing from staging to live, focus on moving only the site files, not the database unless absolutely necessary.

3. Use git for version control

Using Git is an industry-standard practice for managing code and tracking changes across environments. By integrating Git into your workflow, you can easily stage, commit, and push changes to your live site while ensuring the database remains untouched. Here’s how it works:

• Separate branches for staging and live: Keep staging and live codebases separate by maintaining different branches. Test new features on the staging branch and once you’re satisfied with the results, merge the changes into the live branch.
• Push only file changes: When pushing to live, you can easily limit the push to just the files that have changed, leaving the database unaffected.

Platforms like GitHub, Bitbucket, and GitLab are popular options for version control. In addition, hosting providers like WP Engine and Kinsta support Git-based workflows for deploying changes directly to your WordPress site.

4. Manual push via FTP/SFTP

If you’re not using a version control system, manual file transfer via FTP or SFTP is a straightforward, albeit more manual, process. Here’s how you can do it:

• Use an FTP client like FileZilla or Cyberduck to connect to both your staging and live servers.
• Copy files like updated themes, plugins, or media files from your staging site to the corresponding folders on the live server.
• Avoid overwriting critical directories like wp-content/uploads or wp-config.php that are specific to the live environment.

Make sure you don’t transfer any files related to the database, such as SQL dump files, as these can override live site data.

5. Leverage migration tools

Several WordPress plugins are specifically designed to handle site migration without overwriting databases. Some of the most popular tools include:

• WP Migrate DB Pro: Allows for advanced migration capabilities, letting you move only the necessary files or database tables you need.
• All-in-One WP Migration: A popular and easy-to-use plugin that helps migrate WordPress files without touching the database. It has an option to exclude database migration when transferring your site.
• Duplicator: Offers file-based migrations and can also exclude database changes during site transfers.

These tools are particularly helpful if you need to ensure that only certain elements of your site are moved without disrupting the live environment.

Best practices to follow

To avoid complications and ensure smooth deployment, it’s critical to follow these best practices:

• Always have a testing period: Even after pushing changes live, conduct a thorough test of the live site to ensure everything works as expected.
• Limit downtime: Try to push updates during periods of low traffic. Use a maintenance mode plugin if necessary to inform users that updates are being made.
• Communicate with your team: If you’re working with multiple developers or a team, ensure that everyone understands the deployment process and potential risks.

Tools and plugins for managing staging and live sites

Besides the aforementioned migration and backup tools, there are several other plugins and platforms designed to make managing a staging and live WordPress site easier:

• WP Staging: A plugin that simplifies the process of creating a staging site and managing push-to-live actions.
• Kinsta: A premium hosting provider that offers an integrated staging environment with simple push-to-live functionality.
• WP Engine: Another popular managed hosting solution that allows seamless staging site creation and database handling.

These tools can greatly simplify the process of deploying changes to live sites and provide safety nets like backups and easy rollback options.

Conclusion

Pushing a WordPress staging site to live without overwriting the database is a delicate but essential part of website management. Whether you’re an individual site owner or working with a team, planning, using the right tools, and following best practices can make this process smooth and safe. Always backup your data, understand the difference between site files and databases, and rely on robust migration tools to ensure the live database remains untouched while pushing your updates live.

If you’re looking to further enhance your WordPress site’s functionality, check out our guide on turning your WordPress site into a mobile app here.