How To Create a Staging Website With MemberPress?

This document will cover the basics of managing a staging website when running a website with MemberPress.

The guide will also help you configure all needed settings to avoid potential issues with your live or staging website.

Working With Staging Website

You can occasionally encounter issues with WordPress or MemberPress that require thorough debugging.

Issues can sometimes be created by simply updating or adding a new plugin or theme to your website. They can also result from working with different plugins, caching, server or hosting problems, etc.

In most cases, it's hard to know the cause of the issue without proper troubleshooting. Troubleshooting often involves disabling plugins, changing the theme, examining the template files, etc. If done on your live website (environment), this can create problems with the website's functioning.

Having a staging website can be beneficial for the overall management of your live website. A staging website is used to update or install new plugins and themes, test code or settings changes, or debug. Also, having a staging website will help any support team solve issues faster.

Staging Website Setup

Setting up a staging website is often not complicated and can be done even by a non-technical person.

Most hosting companies include the option for creating a staging website in their basic package. If available, this option will probably be the easiest way to create a staging website.

Otherwise, you could create a staging website using a plugin like Duplicator. Alternatively, you can create a staging website manually.

Managing Staging and Live Website

You can move the data between your Live and Staging websites:

• Pulling is the process of copying your Live (production) website files to your Staging website.
• Pushing is the opposite process of Pulling. In this process, the contents of your Staging website are copied to the Live website.

These processes will replace all existing files on the destination website. Thus, for example, the pushing process will replace all existing files on the Live website with the Staging website files.

Therefore, to safely update plugins and ensure there will be no issues with your live website functioning, follow these steps:

1. Pull your Live website to your Staging website. This will make your Staging website identical to your Live website.
2. Log in to your Staging website, and apply any updates you have.
3. Once you are sure that there are no issues following the updates you applied,

Configuring MemberPress Emails

Una vez que haya creado su sitio de ensayo, siga estos pasos para asegurarse de que no haya conflictos con su sitio activo:

1. Disable Reminders: Go to Dashboard > MemberPress > Reminders and disable all reminders. Here, you remove all reminders or only disable emails while keeping all reminders. To disable emails for each reminder, follow these steps:
   • Hover over the reminder name and click the Editar link;
   • Disable both user-related and admin-related emails by unchecking their (Send…) options.

2. Disable add-ons: Desactive los siguientes complementos MemberPress en su sitio de ensayo:
   • Herramientas para desarrolladores
   • ActiveCampaign (Listas)
   • ActiveCampaign (Etiquetas)
   • AWeber
   • Contacto constante
   • ConvertKit
   • Goteo - Versión con etiquetas
   • GetResponse
   • MailChimp 3.0
   • MailPoet
   • Mailster

3. Disable MemberPress Notification Emails:
   • Vaya a el Dashboard > MemberPress > Settings > Emails ficha;
   • Here, uncheck all user and admin emails in the list.

These settings prevent double-sending (sending the same email from the live and staging website), wrongly sent emails or similar issues.

Una vez hecho esto, siga las siguientes instrucciones para configurar su pasarela de pago específica para que funcione correctamente en el sitio de ensayo.

Stop All Emails on Staging

With all MemberPress Notifications, Reminders, and marketing integrations deactivated, you should expect no issues related to emails.

On the other hand, emails could also be triggered by other third-party plugins or WordPress.

In this case, you can use one of the third-party plugins to prevent the staging website from sending any emails. Please note that this will stop all emails on your staging website, not just MemberPress ones. 

Stripe

Si está utilizando Stripe como método de pago, para evitar cualquier impacto negativo en sus pagos, deberá seguir estos pasos:

Nota: Before taking these steps, please ensure access to MemberPress and your Stripe account. You will need access to both to reconnect Stripe to your site.

Pulling (Live > Staging)

Once the pulling process is done, please apply the following changes to Stripe settings:

1. On your Live website:
   1. Desconecte su pasarela de pago Stripe
   2. Visite la URI: https://[live.domain.com]/wp-admin/?mp-clear-connection-data=true para borrar tus datos de conexión. (Sustituya [live.domain.com] por su dirección actual). en directo dominio.
2. On your Staging website:
   1. Desconecte su pasarela de pago Stripe
   2. NO ELIMINE la pasarela de pago
   3. Visite la URI: https://[staging.domain.com]/wp-admin/?mp-clear-connection-data=true para borrar los datos de conexión. (Sustituya [staging.domain.com] por su actual puesta en escena dominio.

Note: Deleting your Stripe gateway in MemberPress Settings de su sitio staging (clonado desde live), o desconectando su plugin MemberPress de MemberPress.com, borrará el webhook MemberPress en directo en su cuenta de Stripe. Esto significa que su sitio en vivo dejará de comunicarse con Stripe.

Para solucionarlo, intente desconectar y volver a conectar la conexión de Stripe en su sitio activo. Tenga en cuenta que esto sólo funcionará si no ha eliminado la pasarela de Stripe en la configuración de MemberPress en su sitio activo.

3. Back on your Live website:
   1. Vuelva a conectar su pasarela de pago Stripe a su cuenta real. 
4. Back on your Staging website:
   1. Connect your Stripe Payment Gateway.
   2. Compruebe el Modo de prueba box on the Stripe Payment Gateway settings.
   3. Haga clic en el botón Actualización button at the bottom of the page to save the settings.

You are all set. Live payments will still be processed and will work properly. Your payments on the staging website will be in Stripe test mode. You can see these transactions by going to your Stripe dashboard and enabling the Modo de prueba toggle in the top right: 

Pushing (Staging > Live)

Following the push of the files from the Staging to the Live website, please apply the following settings:

1. Antes de pushing Live: Disconnect, but DO NOT Delete the Stripe payment gateway on the staging site. 
2. Then, push to live.
3. Después de empujar para vivir, visite la URI https://live.domain.com/wp-admin/?mp-clear-connection-data=true en el sitio en vivo para borrar sus datos de conexión. 
4. Vuelva a conectar su pasarela Stripe.
5. Uncheck the Modo de prueba box in the Stripe Payment Gateway Settings.
6. Haga clic en el botón Actualización button to save the options.

PayPal

We also recommend using PayPal Sandbox mode on your staging site. For this, you will need to crear una cuenta "sandbox" para utilizar PayPal forma de pago.

La otra opción es añadir una nueva pasarela de pago de PayPal utilizando una cuenta de prueba. Lo mejor es dejar activada la pasarela de pago de PayPal activa. Asegúrese de eliminar cualquier pasarela de pago de prueba que cree antes de volver a activarla. 

Si esto le parece todavía demasiado complicado, puede simplemente hacer algunos pagos de prueba con Stripe en su sitio en vivo poniendo Stripe en modo de prueba.

Autorizar.net

Si está utilizando Authorize.Net, tendrá que actualizar las URL de Silent Post y Webhook.

Si esto le parece todavía demasiado complicado, puede simplemente hacer algunos pagos de prueba con Stripe en su sitio en vivo poniendo Stripe en modo de prueba.

Nota: Si ha eliminado la pasarela de pago en la configuración de MemberPress en su sitio activo, consulte este documento en cómo arreglar las suscripciones de los usuarios.