A staging copy is an exact duplicate of your site — files and database — at its own address, protected by a password. Break it, rebuild it, experiment freely: your real site never notices. Site → Files tab → Staging copy.
Creating one
One click. A couple of minutes later you get a link like yoursite-staging.apps.veldhost.eu plus a username (staging) and password shown on the card. It's included with Pro and Business; on Starter it's €5/month until you remove it.
What's different on staging
- It's private. Password-protected, and search engines are told to stay away.
- It's frozen in time. It's a copy from the moment you created (or last refreshed) it — new orders, posts or uploads on your live site don't appear on staging.
- It's sandboxed. Your scheduled tasks don't run there, and framework apps have outbound email switched to log-only, so staging can't accidentally email your customers.
Refreshing and going live
Refresh from live site throws the staging copy away and takes a fresh one — anything you changed on staging is lost, so treat staging as a place to rehearse, not to build. When a change works on staging, apply it to your live site the same way you rehearsed it (and take a backup first — it's one click).
Removing it
Remove staging deletes the copy and, on Starter, stops the charge immediately. You can create a fresh one any time.