Publish to Staging

Overview

Publish to Staging provides a way to validate an updated site configuration before publishing it to production.

After publishing to Staging, you can direct requests to the staging network by editing the host file on your local machine. Learn how.

When you're satisfied with the site configuration on staging, you can then publish it to production.

Publishing to staging does not affect traffic in production.

Limitations:

• Routing: Traditional routing to the staging environment is not available. To direct traffic to this site, in your host file, map the site hostname to the staging environment IP address. Learn how.

• Single server deployment - The staging environment runs on a single server with limited capacity. This should be factored into testing.

• No SLA provided - Service Level Agreements (SLAs) do not apply to the staging environment. Uptime, availability, and response times are not guaranteed.

• Not for performance or stress testing - Staging is not suitable for performance or stress testing and does not replicate production performance.

• Limited geographic coverage - Staging operates in a single geographic region, which may introduce latency and network conditions not representative of global production conditions.

• Configuration and functional validation only - Staging is designed for site configuration and functional validation, not for load testing or production readiness.

• Purge functionality - Purge is not supported via the UI but is available via the API.

• Observability: Requests to the staging network are not captured in the media delivery logs, or Qwilt reports and dashboards.

• Need more robust support? If your project requires more comprehensive testing, please contact your account team to explore alternatives.

Publish a Site to Staging

To publish a site version to staging:

1. Make sure the site you want to publish is saved. See Save a Site Configuration.
2. Select the version from the Versions List. See Version Control.
3. Select Publish and then Staging.
   
4. See Publish a Site for further instruction.

Direct Traffic to the Site

To direct requests to the site on staging, edit the host file on your local machine to map the site hostname to this static IP: 35.234.109.253.

For example, if the site hostname is www.example.com, add the following line to the host file on your local computer:

35.234.109.253 www.example.com

In this example, an API request from the local machine to www.example.com would be directed to the staging server at 35.234.109.253 rather than to the production server.

Markers in the Site Configuration UI

Purple markers in the Site Confuration UI identify versions that are published to staging:



In the Publish History, each item specifies the target of the publishing operation, production or staging.

Linked Certificates

When a site is published, the linked certificate is published along with it, regardless of the publishing target.
To check the status of a linked certificate, open the Certificates tab. A linked certificate displays a Published for production or Published for staging label, or two dots if it's published for both. An unpublished certificate does not display a label.

Published for production:

Published for both:

Purge

Currently, you can use the Purge API to run a Purge operation on the Staging network.

Simply set the purgeTarget attribute to staging.