When activating your pixfort theme, you have the option to assign the installation to a Live or Staging site. The choice between Live and Staging site depends on the usage of the website. A Live site is a normal public website and can be activated on any domain. A Staging site, on the other hand, is a separate environment used for testing, development, or design purposes before going live.
This guide explains what a staging site is and outlines the domain patterns that qualify for staging use.
Theme Activation
What Is a Live Site?
A Live site is your public website that visitors will access. It can be activated on any domain, and can be used either for your final live site or when using a staging site is not possible because the domain doesn’t meet the required criteria.
What Is a Staging Site?
A Staging site is a separate website environment used for testing, development, or design purposes before going live. It allows you to safely build and customize your site without affecting your public live website.
How Staging Domains Work with pixfort Theme
Each pixfort plan includes a specific number of Live and Staging site activations.
During activation, you’ll be asked to choose whether the installation is for a Live or Staging website.
While live sites can be activated on any domain, Staging sites must use a domain that meets specific criteria to qualify as staging.
If the domain doesn’t match the approved staging domain patterns below, you won’t be able to activate the theme as a staging site and will be prompted to check this guide.
Accepted Staging Domain Patterns
To qualify as a Staging site, your site must use one of the following TLDs or Subdomain patterns:
Accepted Top-Level Domains (TLDs)
- .local
- .test
- .dev
- localhost
- IPv4-based URLs (e.g. 192.168.1.10)
Accepted Subdomain Patterns
To be recognized as a staging domain, your site must include one of the following in its URL:
- *.staging.yourdomain.com
- *.stage.yourdomain.com
- *.dev.yourdomain.com
- *.test.yourdomain.com
- Subdomains containing keywords dev, staging, or test
Common Temporary or Hosting Provider URLs
Sites hosted on a temporary URL provided by a popular WordPress hosting provider are recognized as staging domains. A temporary URL is any hostname ending with or containing these known staging/temporary domains:
- hostingersite.com
- sg-host.com
- wpengine.com
- wpenginepowered.com
- flywheelstaging.com
- flywheelsites.com
- cloudwaysapps.com
- kinsta.com
- kinsta.cloud
- ngrok.io
- -dev.ksysweb.com
- -stg.ksysweb.com
- myftpupload.com
- pantheonsite.io
- mybluehost.me
- wpcomstaging.com
- mystagingwebsite.com
- tempurl.host
- dream.press
- stage.site
If you use a popular WordPress hosting provider and your default temporary URL is not listed above, please contact our support team so we can review and consider adding it to our accepted staging domain patterns.
Example of valid staging domains:
- staging.mysite.com
- dev.mysite.com
- mysite.test
- mysite.local
- localhost
- 192.168.1.101
Invalid for staging:
- mysite.com
- previewmysite.com
- theme-preview.mysite.com
Good to know
When you activate your site as a Staging site, a banner will appear at the bottom of the website pages to indicate that it’s a staging site. If you move your website to a live domain and want to remove the staging banner, you’ll need to switch your activation to a Live site.
Staging Site Banner
If you want to migrate your staging site to a live site, you can check this article.
Tip
If your domain doesn’t match the above patterns, you can temporarily activate your installation as a Live site instead. Once you’re done building or testing the website, you can disconnect your domain and move it to your final live domain when you’re ready to go live.
To disconnect a site, you can check this article.
You can manage your activations at any time from your pixfort account.
