What Is Staging? Why Staging Environments Are Crucial for Success

If you’ve ever been in a school play, you know how important the dress rehearsal is. That’s where you find out who knows their stuff and what changes need to be made. In web design and development, staging is similar to a rehearsal. It offers a chance to test new features, updates, or changes to your website or application before they go live and after development.

This testing environment helps you identify and fix issues early — as in, before opening night when the site or app is live. That means a smoother launch (or update) that doesn’t have pesky bugs and glitches. Importantly, it saves you time and resources by preventing costly errors in production.

I develop websites for a living, so take my word for it: you don’t want to test in production.

Throughout this article, I’ll explain how staging environments work, what tools and technologies make all these processes possible, and how to choose what works best for you. For simplicity’s sake, I’ll use the word “product” to describe whatever project you have in mind, be it software, a website, or an application.

Table of Contents:

Do you already know what you’re looking for? Browse the table of contents to skip ahead.

• The Basics
• Staging Benefits
  • Testing
  • Quality Assurance
  • Error Identification
  • User Experience
• Setup
  • Planning and Preparation
  • Technical Setup
• Best Practices
  • Updates
  • Security
  • Testing
• Common Challenges and Solutions
  • Data Synchronization Issues
  • Performance Discrepancies
  • Configuration Drift
  • UAT Challenges
• Tools and Technologies
  • Deployment Tools
  • Testing Tools
  • Monitoring Tools

A staging environment sits between your development environment and your production sites. It serves as the final testing ground for your project before deployment. It’s a replica that lets you test and change features risk-free. I use testing and production environments daily in my job as a web developer.

A staging environment sits between your development environment and your production sites.

Testing your product in staging might not seem like a big deal — but you’ll regret skipping this step when you see what happens when you launch a mistake. No one will want to use it. First impressions matter. Imagine fumbling your lines on the opening night of the big play — talk about embarrassing!

There are many times that your code will work in your development environment, but you forget there is some setting or dependency you need for it to work in production.

By having a staging environment, you get to run tests before actually doing your launch. In addition, when you are working with a team of developers, having a staging environment can be a great testing ground to make sure that everyone’s code works together seamlessly.

Once you’ve designed and developed your product, the next step is to test it. Your goal should be to ensure that everything works as intended before publishing your changes.

In the staging environment, you can identify bugs, performance issues, and other potential problems that, if left unresolved, might disrupt the user experience.

If you really want to know your stuff, you should be able to tell the difference between development, staging, and production environments.

Let’s break down these three environments:

• Development: We use the development environment to write and test code. Here, you expect to make many changes to your code until it works as intended.
• Staging: Enter the staging environment. It closely resembles production and is used for final code testing before deployment.
• Production: Finally, production is the live environment. This is where your users interact with your software, website, or application.

Each environment is crucial to developing products successfully.

We’ve discussed the structure of a standard development environment. Let’s briefly examine its benefits to your development process.

Setting up a staging environment requires careful planning and technical execution. Here are the steps I follow when I’m setting up my staging environment:

Planning and Preparation

First, I plan and prepare. Here’s what my plan usually includes:

1. Define Goals and Objectives

I define my goals and objectives clearly. That way, I’ll know what I want to achieve with the staging environment.

2. List Infrastructure Requirements

Infrastructure refers to components such as hardware and software. The environment I want to set up – most likely a server – should have everything I need to create an accurate replica of the production environment.

3. Determine Permissions and Access Control

I don’t let just anyone gain access to my staging environment. Any mistake could undo my hard work. That’s why I specify who should have access and what level of permissions they require.

Technical Setup

Next, I work on the technical setup. This is all about creating a replica of my production environment to test my project before it goes live. Four steps will come into play here:

1. Cloning the Production Environment

I start by copying my production server configuration, including operating systems, installed software, and network settings. Some hosts, especially those that provide WordPress hosting environments usually have a staging feature that I use to clone the production environment with a click of a button.

When I don’t have access to a cloning feature, I use Docker, a virtual machine, to duplicate the environment. Before I move on to the next step, I ensure all dependencies and services are mirrored to avoid discrepancies.

2. Database Duplication

The next thing I do is ensure the staging environment has a copy of the production database. I do this by performing a database dump from the production environment and restoring it in the staging setup.

Tools such as mysqldump for MySQL or pg_dump for PostgreSQL can help with this. Remember to protect sensitive data to maintain security while testing.

3. Configuration Management

Next, it’s time to manage different settings and configurations for staging and production environments. I use configuration management tools such as Ansible, Chef, or Puppet depending on what I have access to for the project.

Then, where applicable, I create separate configuration files for each environment. This ensures that environment-specific variables, such as API keys and database connections, are set up correctly.

4. Deployment Automation

Finally, the deployment to the staging environment can be automated using continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) tools. Some of my favorite tools include Jenkins, GitLab CI, or CircleCI.

I like to set up scripts that automatically deploy updates to the staging environment whenever changes are pushed to my version control system. This step ensures consistency and is less error-prone since it’s automated.

We’ve covered the definitions and steps, but now let’s talk strategy and set you up for success. Here are some simple but effective ways to maximize the benefits of your staging environment.

Regular Updates

I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to keep your staging environment in sync with production. This is a proven way to identify and resolve issues early. You’ll need to implement synchronization and automate the process to keep the updates, well, updated — but I promise it is 1000% worth it.

I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to keep your staging environment in sync with production.

Synchronization

Synchronization keeps the staging environment “in sync” with the latest production data and code. You can use popular tools such as resync, AWS DataSync, or Azure Data Factory to pull data and updates from production.

Automated Syncs

You can also implement automation tools (Jenkins or GitLab CI are good ones) to sync staging with production regularly.

I mostly use these tools to schedule automated syncs and eliminate the need for manual intervention. When these processes are automated, there’s a lower risk of outdated data or configurations.

Thorough Testing

Alert, alert! Don’t use the staging environment simply as a mirror of production. Instead, use it to conduct thorough testing. This approach helps identify potential issues before they reach the production stage.

Types of Tests

The testing phase shouldn’t be unidirectional — you must test everything before pushing the changes to production, including:

• individual components
• integration tests (this verifies how different parts of the application work together)
• end-to-end tests to simulate real user scenarios
• user acceptance testing (UAT) to ensure the application meets user requirements

The main goal is to ensure that the changes you push to the production environment work as they should.

Testing Strategies

You know what they say: if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. You need a strategy as you conduct tests.

For example, you may want to prioritize critical paths and high-impact features, perform regression testing to ensure new changes don’t break existing functionality, and involve a mix of automated and manual testing to cover all aspects of the application.

Security Measures

You’ll need strong security measures in your staging environment to protect sensitive data and maintain overall system integrity. Here’s how I like to go about it:

Access Control

Access control is one of the most basic yet effective security measures in a digital environment. This system limits access to the staging environment to only those who need it.

For instance, you can use role-based access control (RBAC) to define permissions. In this environment, only authorized team members can make changes or access sensitive data.

Data Protection

Make sure any sensitive data you’ll be handling in the staging environment is protected. One way to do this is to use encryption and data masking techniques.

For example, you can make personal information anonymous to maintain privacy while maintaining a conducive environment for realistic testing scenarios.

Environment Isolation

It’s easy to mistakenly modify the production environment, thinking it’s the staging environment. That’s partly because the production and staging environments share so many similarities.

To prevent this from happening, you should keep these two environments separated. This separation helps maintain your production data’s integrity and ensures that testing activities do not interfere with live operations.

You may have heard of the infamous push notification, “Hello test1 from seank,” a Starbucks developer accidentally sent to its users live in the app. Don’t be like Sean K.— always confirm you’re in the right environment.

Granted, setting up and maintaining a staging environment will involve many challenges. But as you’ll discover below, you can also implement effective strategies and tools to overcome these issues.

I can’t overstate the important role of high-tech tools in maintaining an effective hosting environment.

Below, I’ll highlight some of the most useful tools and technologies for staging environments and point out how they can help streamline deployment, testing, and monitoring processes.

Deployment Tools

Jenkins, CircleCI, and GitLab CI/CD are some of my favorite tools for deploying to staging environments.

Here’s what they do:

• Jenkins: Jenkins is an open-source automation server that helps automate parts of the software development process, including building, testing, and deploying.
• CircleCI: CircleCI is a cloud-based CI/CD tool allowing fast and efficient deployment. This tool mainly focuses on performance and flexibility.
• GitLab CI/CD: GitLab CI/CD is an integrated part of GitLab that provides powerful continuous integration and deployment capabilities directly within the GitLab interface.

Make no mistake — not every staging tool you encounter will benefit your project. To find the best tool for the job, it’s important to at least have an idea of what features to look for.

This is the criteria I use to select a staging tool. Each tool should:

• Easily define, build, test, and deploy pipelines. In software development (especially in the context of staging), pipelines are automated sequences of processes that manage the flow of code changes through different phases
• Handle multiple concurrent jobs and scale according to project needs
• Seamlessly integrate with various version control systems and third-party tools
• Provide real-time notifications for build status and deployment results

All these tools automate and streamline the deployment process. As a result, they help minimize the risk of human error (hey, we all make mistakes) while ensuring consistency.

Testing Tools

Consider tools such as Selenium, Jest, and Cypress for automated testing. Here’s what they bring to the table:

• Selenium: Selenium is a suite of tools for automating web browsers. It is widely used for end-to-end testing.
• Jest: Jest is a JavaScript testing framework best known for its simplicity. It comes equipped with features for snapshot testing and mocking.
• Cypress: Cypress offers a fast, reliable testing environment for web applications. It is usually easy to set up and offers comprehensive documentation.

Consider your options carefully. You have to weigh a lot of factors when deciding what testing tools to use. You should look for:

• Compatibility across different web browsers
• Immediate feedback on test results
• Detailed test reports and logs for better debugging
• Easy integration with CI/CD pipelines and other tools

The whole point of using testing tools is to catch bugs and ensure quality before production deployment.

Monitoring Tools

The job doesn’t end with deployment and testing; you need to monitor performance long after going live. New Relic and Sentry are excellent choices for monitoring performance.

New Relic offers a behind-the-scenes look at application performance, infrastructure, and user experience.

Sentry, on the other hand, mainly focuses on error tracking. In other words, it can identify, diagnose, and fix issues in real time.

Some important features to consider when choosing monitoring tools include the ability to:

• Track application performance and errors as they happen
• Gain insights into system behavior and user interaction
• Set up alerts for critical issues to ensure timely responses
• Integrate with various platforms and development tools for a seamless monitoring experience

The right monitoring tools maintain a healthy staging environment. These tools provide valuable insights — so you can be proactive when it comes to making fixes and improvements.

Staging environments are your project’s dress rehearsal. They provide a safe environment for testing new features and making fixes before it all goes live.

We’ve also seen that these environments are duplicates of your production setup. The whole point is to catch any bugs or performance issues early on and in a familiar environment. As a result, they make sure your final product does what it’s supposed to do.

By following best practices, using the right tools, and tackling any challenges head-on, you’re setting the stage for an unforgettable performance. If you put in the work to deliver top-notch software, websites, or applications, you’re sure to impress your audience (AKA the user) and have them clamoring for an encore!