Written by Admin on 2025-05-06

How to Download a WordPress Staging Site

If you're working on a WordPress website, it's essential to have a staging site to test new features and design changes before implementing them on your live site. Once you've made all the necessary changes, you need to download the staging site to your local computer for backup or migration purposes.

In this article, we'll show you how to download a WordPress staging site in a few easy steps.

Step 1: Export the Staging Site's Database

The first step is to export the staging site's database. You can do this by accessing your hosting account's cPanel and navigating to the phpMyAdmin tool. From there, select your staging site's database, click the Export tab, and choose the "Custom" option.

In the custom export settings, select all the tables that belong to your staging site's database and choose the "Zip" compression method. Finally, click the "Go" button to export the database.

Step 2: Download the Staging Site's Files

Next, you'll need to download all the staging site's files to your local computer. You can do this in a few ways, depending on how you set up your staging site. If you used a plugin to create the staging site, you can navigate to the plugin's settings and download a backup of your staging site's files.

Alternatively, you can use an FTP client to access your hosting account's files and navigate to the directory where your staging site is stored. From there, download all the files to your local computer.

Step 3: Merge the Database and Files

Once you have downloaded the staging site's database and files, you need to merge them to create a complete backup of your staging site. To do this, you'll need to create a new WordPress installation on your local computer and import the staging site's database into it.

After importing the database, upload the staging site's files to the WordPress installation's directory. Make sure that you overwrite the existing files, as this will ensure that all the files are up to date.

Conclusion

Downloading a WordPress staging site is an essential step in the website development process. By following the steps outlined in this article, you can create a complete backup of your staging site and migrate it to your live site when you're ready to go live.