Staging sites on Flywheel
How to create, use, and push a staging site on Flywheel — including how to copy from live and push changes back to production.
Flywheel's staging environment lets you work on a private copy of your site without affecting what visitors see. It's built into every Flywheel plan and is a standard part of how we develop and test changes for your site.
Quick summary
Flywheel gives every site a one-click staging environment. We make changes on staging, test them, and then push to live when everything looks right. You can preview the staging site any time by asking us for the URL and password.
What staging is on Flywheel
On Flywheel, staging is a full copy of your WordPress site hosted at a separate URL. It's:
- Password-protected — only people you share the URL and password with can see it.
- Blocked from search engines — it won't appear in Google.
- Identical to your live site — same theme, plugins, content, and database.
- Synchronized on demand — you can refresh it from the live site, or push changes back to live.
Creating a staging site
Log in to Flywheel at app.getflywheel.com and open your site's dashboard.
Find the Staging section. This is usually accessible from the site sidebar or navigation tabs.
Click "Create staging site." Flywheel will copy your live site's files and database to the staging environment. This usually takes a few minutes.
Note the staging URL and password. Flywheel will show you a staging URL (often something like yoursitename.flywheelsites.com) and a password for the staging site.
Copying the live site to staging
If a staging site already exists but you want to refresh it with the latest live site content:
Open the Staging section in your site's Flywheel dashboard.
Click "Copy live to staging." This overwrites the current staging site with a fresh copy of the live site.
Confirm the action. Flywheel will warn you that any unsaved staging work will be overwritten.
Copying live to staging will overwrite staging changes
Any work that exists only on staging will be lost when you copy from live. Make sure any staging work has been pushed live first, or is intentionally being replaced.
Pushing staging to live
After testing on staging, here's how to publish those changes to the live site:
Verify everything on staging. Check all pages, test any forms, and confirm nothing is broken.
Open the Staging section in your Flywheel dashboard.
Click "Push to live." Flywheel replaces the live site's files and database with the staging version.
Confirm the push. Flywheel will ask you to confirm, and may automatically take a backup of your live site first.
Verify the live site. Open your website in a fresh browser tab and check that the changes are showing correctly.
Accessing the staging site
If you'd like to see what's on staging before it goes live:
- Ask us for the staging URL and password.
- Open the staging URL in your browser.
- Enter the password when prompted.
You'll see the private version of your site exactly as it will appear after the push to live.
Common questions
Related guides
- What is a staging site?
- The Flywheel dashboard explained
- Backups on Flywheel
- Staging on WP Engine
- Staging on Kinsta
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