OVERVIEW
Target audience: Site Administrators, Site Managers
You can create a staging site if you need to make extensive structural changes to a Web Management System (WMS) website, such as major menu reorganization.
A staging site is a snapshot or a copy of a live site at a particular point in time that allows you to make changes without disrupting the live site.
In this article:
Requesting a staging website
To request a staging site, fill out the WMS staging site request form.
Accessing your staging website
To access your staging website:
- Go to the staging site. The URL will be https://staging.mcgill.ca/sitename, where "staging" replaces the "www" and "sitename" is the name of your site.
- Sign in using your McGill Username and Password. Site permissions will be the same as on the live site.
Your staging site will look the same as your live site except for the toolbars at the top of the page, which will be blue instead of black and grey.
Making your staging site live
When ready to make your staging site live, complete the Make WMS site live request form.
Once live, the staging site will override the pre-existing site.
FAQs
Can I change my live site while working on my staging site?
It is strongly recommended not to update or change your live site after creating your staging site. The staging site is a copy of the live site at a specific moment in time. To avoid losing changes when the staging site goes live, every change must be made on both the live and staging sites.
This means you will have two sites to maintain in parallel until your staging site goes live. We recommended to keep this transition period as short as possible.
Can I create Channel news or events after my staging site is created?
Once your staging site has been created, we recommend that you delay creating new Channels news or events until after your staging site has been made live, if possible, because:
- Any new Channels items created on your live site will not be present on your staging site
- Any new Channels items created on your staging site will not have valid Channels item IDs
Note: If you must create Channels items, you need to:
- Do this from your live site
- Ensure that they have been distributed so they will still exist on the Channels hub
- Then request that these distributed Channels items be re-imported to your site, otherwise these items will be lost
Will all the links within my website still work?
You must use relative links and not absolute links when pointing to pages located within your site.
- Example of an absolute link:
- <a href="www.mcgill.ca/sitename/page1">
- Example of a relative link:
- <a href="/sitename/page1">
Warning: If you use absolute links in staging, the links will change from “www.mcgill.ca/sitename/page1” to “staging.mcgill.ca/sitename/page1."
When your site goes live, these links will be broken because the URL will not revert to “www.”
Consult Links in the WMS for more information on using absolute and relative links.
When my staging site goes live, will I lose anything?
You must download all webform submissions (including any files) from your live site immediately before submitting a request for your staging site to go live.
Can I make a copy of my site to keep in my archives?
This is not a feature that is available in the WMS. There are applications for downloading the published content of your site, but McGill IT does not support them.
What happens if my URLs change?
See Redirects in the WMS for more information.
Can I get help with restructuring my site?
Yes, visit the Web Services website for more information and to request a consultation.
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