Using the staging environment for safe development and testing

What is a shadow?

Seravo offers staging environments ("shadows") for all customers using the WP Pro plan or above. The main purpose is to provide a safe testing environment without the risk of breaking something in production. If your site doesn't have a staging environment (shadow), contact our customer support. We'll set one up for you!

Note: Automatic daily backups are not enabled for shadows. Please take manual backups if needed.

The shadow can be reset whenever to be an exact copy of the production site. This way the production can be left untouched while you develop and test new features safely.

How to access the shadow

The instance switcher is located in the top bar of the WordPress Dashboard. Use this to change between staging and production.

Reset the shadow from WordPress

Under Tools -> Site Status you can find a designated section for shadows.

Remember, after each reset the shadow environment is an exact copy of the production site so your credentials stay the same!

Shadow uses a cookie

It is also worth noting that the website URL stays the same too. This is achieved by using a cookie. Some plugins may misbehave if the site URL suddenly changes so this way you should be able to use the site in the same way as you use the production site.

For developers

The shadow can also be reset by logging to the production site with SSH and running the commans wp-shadow-reset

More detailed information about our shadow feature can be found from our developer documentation.