Troubleshoot errors using a staging site

A staging site is a useful tool for troubleshooting conflicts between plugins, errors with themes, and more without impacting your live website. This guide will show you how to use a staging site to troubleshoot common errors.

This feature is available on sites with the WordPress.com Business and Commerce plans. If you have a Business plan, make sure to activate it. For free sites and sites on the Personal and Premium plans, upgrade your plan to access this feature.

A staging site creates an exact replica of your live site, including any errors it has. On the staging site, you can deactivate plugins and change themes to identify where the error is without impacting your live site.

To create a staging site, follow these steps:

1. Visit your Sites list.
2. Click on the site from the list of your sites.
3. Navigate to the “Staging Site” tab.
4. Click the “Add staging site” button.

5. Once the staging site is created, click the “Manage staging site” button to switch to the newly created staging site.

6. On the staging site, switch to a default WordPress theme, such as Twenty Twenty-Four or Twenty Twenty-Five, to see if the issue persists.
   • If the issue goes away, your theme is causing the issue. You can: a) change your theme; b) contact the theme’s author and ask them to fix the issue.
   • If the issue doesn’t go away, proceed to the next step.
7. Go to Plugins → Installed Plugins and temporarily deactivate all plugins from your website (except for Akismet and Jetpack, which are automatically managed for you and unlikely to be the cause of the issue.)
8. Check if the error still appears. If the issue is no longer present, the plugin(s) you deactivated was causing the conflict.
9. Now, determine which plugin is causing the conflict by reactivating your plugins one by one and checking after each one is reactivated. Once the error returns, you’ll know that the plugin you just reactivated is the one causing the issue.
10. Switch to your production site and deactivate the plugin or theme that you identified as the issue, or sync your changes to production.
11. Leave the plugin deactivated and contact the plugin’s developer to fix the issue.