Chykalophia Docs

The difference between your Webflow staging subdomain and your live production site, and how to use both safely.

Webflow gives you two places your site can be published: a staging subdomain and your live domain. Understanding the difference helps you test changes before they reach your real visitors.

Quick summary

Every Webflow site has a free staging subdomain (yoursite.webflow.io) for testing. Your live site is on your custom domain (yoursite.com). You can publish to staging first to check how things look, then publish to your live domain when you're confident. Your customers use the live domain.

The staging subdomain

Every Webflow site automatically comes with a free staging subdomain in the format yoursite.webflow.io. This is a real, publicly accessible URL — but your visitors don't know it exists. It's for your team and Chykalophia to use for testing and review.

Publishing to the staging subdomain is free and instant. Use it to:

Preview big changes before they go live
Share a link with a colleague for feedback
Test new CMS content in context
Check how the site looks on the staging URL before touching the live site

Staging is not private by default

The .webflow.io subdomain is a public URL. Anyone who knows the address can visit it, and it can even appear in search results unless search engine indexing is turned off for it. Don't publish sensitive or confidential content to staging if you're concerned about it being discovered before launch.

The live site

Your live site is on your custom domain (e.g., yourbusiness.com). This is what your customers, clients, and Google see.

Publishing to the live domain makes your changes available to everyone. Publishing itself costs nothing extra, but connecting a custom domain needs a paid Webflow Site plan, which includes hosting.

How to publish to staging vs live

When you click the Publish button in Webflow, the publish menu lists your publishing options:

yoursite.webflow.io — the staging subdomain
yoursite.com (and possibly www.yoursite.com) — the live custom domain

Tick the checkbox next to the domain(s) you want to publish to, then click Publish to selected domains.

You can publish to staging only, to live only, or to both at once.

A sensible publishing workflow

For routine content edits (fixing a typo, updating a price, publishing a blog post), publishing directly to live is fine.

For bigger changes (new sections, design updates, multiple page edits), use this workflow:

Make your changes in Webflow.

Publish to the staging subdomain only. Tick the webflow.io subdomain and untick your custom domain.

Visit yoursite.webflow.io and check the changes carefully. Browse on both desktop and mobile.

If everything looks good, publish to your live domain.

Visit your live site to confirm the changes appear correctly there too.

Staging in the Designer

When working in the Designer, Chykalophia typically publishes to the staging domain for review before pushing to live. During a project, the staging link is how you'll preview work-in-progress designs.

Common questions

My staging site and live site look different. Which is correct?

They should look identical after both have been published with the same content. A difference usually means you published to one but not the other. Check that you published to both destinations, and clear your browser cache in case it's showing an old copy.

Can I password-protect my staging site?

Webflow's site password covers all of your site's domains, not just the .webflow.io subdomain, so it's mainly useful before launch. It's set in Site settings > General tab > Website password, and it needs a paid Site plan or certain paid Workspace plans. Staging that only logged-in team members can see ("private staging") is a Webflow Enterprise feature. Ask Chykalophia if you'd like either of these.

What if I only have one domain and no staging subdomain?

All Webflow sites have a .webflow.io subdomain. If you can't find it, look in Site settings > Publishing tab > Staging, or ask Chykalophia.

Does publishing to staging affect my live site?

No. Publishing to staging only updates the .webflow.io URL. Your live custom domain is unaffected until you publish to it. (CMS items are handled separately: using Publish now on a single item puts that item live straight away.)

Need a hand?

If you're stuck, email support@chykalophia.com and we'll help. Include your website address and a screenshot if you can.

Staging vs the live site