Setting Up a Staging Site for WordPress Without Built-in Staging

Not all WordPress hosting providers offer built-in staging functionality. If yours doesn’t, manually setting up a separate WordPress installation allows you to test changes without affecting your live site.

This guide walks you through creating a staging site within a subdirectory of your main installation, configuring Apache and WordPress properly.

Step 1: Create a New Database

Most hosting providers allow users to create at least two free databases. Log in to your hosting control panel and follow their documentation to create a new database for the staging site.

Step 2: Install WordPress

Inside your main site's directory, create a new folder (e.g., staging-site). You can name it anything, as long as you reference it correctly in configuration files.
Download and install WordPress in this folder, or copy WordPress files from the main site.

Your directory structure should now look like this:

public_html/
│
├── index.php           ← main site
├── wp-content/
├── wp-config.php
├── staging-site/       ← real staging WordPress install
│   ├── index.php
│   ├── wp-content/
│   └── wp-config.php

Step 3: Configure WordPress

Open wp-config.php in the staging site folder and update the following settings:

Database connection:

define( 'DB_NAME', 'db_name' );
define( 'DB_USER', 'db_user' );
define( 'DB_PASSWORD', 'db_password' );
define( 'DB_HOST', 'db_host' );

Update site addresses to reflect the staging site's URL:

define('WP_HOME', 'https://yourdomain.com/staging-site/');
define('WP_SITEURL', 'https://yourdomain.com/staging-site/');

Step 4: Create a .htaccess File for Staging

Since WordPress relies on Apache rewrite rules, create a .htaccess file inside the staging-site directory to configure URL handling:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
    RewriteEngine On
    RewriteBase /staging-site/

    # Ensure HTTPS
    RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
    RewriteRule ^ https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301]

    # Allow access to index.php
    RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]

    # Redirect requests that aren't actual files or directories to index.php
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
    RewriteRule . /staging-site/index.php [L]
</IfModule>

# Improve security and performance
AddDefaultCharset UTF-8
Options -Indexes

<FilesMatch "\.(htaccess|htpasswd|env|ini|log|conf|db)$">
    Order Allow,Deny
    Deny from all
</FilesMatch>

Step 5: Modify .htaccess in the Main Site

To ensure requests starting with /staging-site/ are correctly routed, add these rules in the main site's .htaccess file before WordPress’s catch-all rules:

# ---------------------------
# WordPress Core Rewrites
# ---------------------------
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
    RewriteEngine On
    RewriteBase /
    RewriteRule .* - [E=HTTP_AUTHORIZATION:%{HTTP:Authorization}]

    # This is a condition that checks whether the current request URI (e.g., the path part of the URL) starts with /staging-site/
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/staging-site/
    # This rule only applies if the above condition is true.
    # Matches URLs that start with staging-state/ and captures anything after that using (.*) — a wildcard group.
    # It rewrites the URL to /staging-site/ followed by the captured part ($1).
    RewriteRule ^staging-site/ - [L]

    # Standard WP rewrites
    RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
    RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>

Step 6: Start Your Staging Site

Visit https://yourdomain.com/staging-site/ in your browser and proceed with the WordPress installation and configuration.

Troubleshooting

Staging site doesn’t load properly? Ensure WordPress was installed correctly and all files are in place.
404 error when accessing the staging site? Your rewrite rules may not be set up correctly, preventing access to the staging folder.