Have you made changes within the staging environment of your online store and want to start implementing these changes within your main site? Then this requires some different steps than if you have a Wordpress website without WooCommerce.
Are you not using WooCommerce? Then you can follow the steps in the following article: WordPress: Move staging environment to main domain.
Required Plugins
You will need a total of 3 plugins to install on both your main site and your staging environment. For logging into your WordPress website, see the article WordPress: Login and Dashboard.
- Order Export & Order Import for WooCommerce
( https://wordpress.org/plugins/order-import-export-for-woocommerce/ ) - Product Import Export for WooCommerce
( https://wordpress.org/plugins/product-import-export-for-woo/ ) - Export and Import Users and Customers (from WebToffee)
( https://wordpress.org/plugins/users-customers-import-export-for-wp-woocommerce/ )
Note: It is recommended to put your main site in maintenance mode before exporting your customers, products and orders. You can also use a plugin like Maintenance (https://wordpress.org/plugins/maintenance/) for this purpose.
Export data
- Install and activate the 3 plugins mentioned above on the main site and staging environment.
- Main Site Dashboard, put your WordPress website in maintenance mode (advised).
- Main Site Dashboard, in the left menu hover over the text WebToffee Import Export (Basic) with your mouse and then click Export.
- A new page opens and you can select the type of data you want to export here. Order is selected by default, so we will export the orders first. Click on Step 2: Select an export method.
- You have the choice here to perform a Quick export or an Advanced export, we choose Quick export for both orders, products and customers. Click Export and repeat these steps for the products (Product) and customers (User/Customer).
- Have you exported the orders, products and customers? Then it's now time to log into your staging environment.
Import data
Note: When importing, make sure you always import the customers first because they are tied to orders and products.
- Staging site Dashboard, in the navigation bar on the left, hover over the text WebToffee Import Export (Basic) with your mouse, then click Import.
- Here, select User/Customer first and at Step 2 choose Quick Import where you drag the downloaded export file from your customers into the field, or click on the field so you can select the file.
- Then press Import and repeat these steps for your orders and products.
Once you have performed these steps, it is time to clone your staging website to your main site. It is recommended here to temporarily disable any caching plugins, examples of these plugins are LiteSpeed Cache, WP Rocket and WP Super Cache.
Move WooCommerce staging to main site.
To clone a website to the main domain, you can use the following article WordPress: Cloning Website to Another (Sub)Domain. Below we briefly describe the main steps.
- Login to Plesk and go to WordPress in the left menu.
- At the WordPress website (domain) you want to clone, click Clone.
- Within the cloning screen, under Target choose Use Existing Domain and select your main site here. Make sure to remove staging from the search path. A message will display that WordPress is already installed at the destination, select Yes so the installation can be overwritten, then click Start.
- After cloning is complete, turn any caching plugins back on or clear the cache and you're done updating your website!
If you need some help, you can always reach our support desk by email support@cloud86.io and on weekdays from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm you can also reach us by phone and via the chat in My Cloud86.