"Staging" feature is really poorly implemented
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Richard R.
This is really really disappointing. The entire point of a staging site is to get everything just so, test it, then easily make it live. Which is how virtually all other providers handle it.
Support says that to make a staging site live, we have to perform multiple manual steps (downloading, uploading, zipping, making sure PHP version is the same, etc). Lots of potential points for failure, and involves longer downtime for the site. I think it's misleading to even call this a staging site--it's just another entirely unrelated web site (with a different billing profile)
Plus the whole "zip file" thing means there's a good chance of orphaned files in the live site (that were deleted in "staging"), contributing to our usage. Unless again, we manually track all of the deleted files and delete them manually.
Please, please, please provide "swap", "copy" or "publish" feature--like every other provider. Or stop calling it staging, and just call it a "free copy" or something.
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William D.
Nexcess does things their own way and they don't care about the consequences. It doesn't surprise me that their staging feature doesn't conform to industry standards because they've got other issues that are unique to their servers as well. Their proprietary "must have plugin" is a train wreck that makes troubleshooting plugin incompatibilities a huge hassle. They remove default wordpress auto-update functions for each individual plugin from wp-admin and replace it with a server dashboard config option that disables auto-update globally for all your plugins for 90 days. Their management style is contradictory to the core wordpress philosophy of giving site owners full control of their websites. They don't disclose the fact that their so-called security measures will prevent you from controlling how and when your site gets updated.