5 Best Practices in a Staging Environment

"Staging" is a term used to describe the process of preparing a web page or application for public viewing. This usually involves creating a copy of a live site, testing it out, and then deploying it to a production server. The goal is to ensure that the final version looks good and performs well. Staging is necessary because it allows you to test new features before they go live. If something goes wrong during the deployment process, you can fix it before it affects visitors.

"Staging environments are essential for any developer who wants to deploy their code into production." - Paul Irish

If you've ever worked on a project where you had to wait until the last minute to get something working, you'll appreciate the benefits of a staging environment. It helps identify bugs early and prevent downtime.

What's a Staging Environment?

A staging environment replicates the production environment, and it's a place where new code changes are first deployed and tested before being pushed to production. This allows for a safer and more controlled testing process. Any issues that arise can be fixed before they impact your live site or web application.

Developers can also use the staging environment to test new features or changes before they are released to the public, ensuring they're ready for production. There are several ways to implement a staging environment, such as using a local server or a cloud service.

What is the Difference Between UAT and a Staging Environment?

User Acceptance Testing (UAT) is the process of testing a software application with real users to ensure that it meets their needs and expectations. This testing is essential to ensure that the software is fit for purpose and user-friendly before it's released to the public. It typically includes a range of tests, such as functional testing, usability testing, and performance testing.

On the other hand, a staging environment allows developers and engineers to test their new code for breaking changes. Thus, it solves a different problem than UAT does. UAT testers aim for usability, whereas developers aim for a bug-free release. These can be done in parallel or independently of each other, and the cumulative outcome of both these crucial stages impacts the overall performance of your application and users' experience of it.

Best Practices for Staging Environments

Here are some best practices for implementing and using a staging environment.

Staging Should be a Copy of the Production Environment

As staging is to serve as a copy of production, keep your staging environment as similar to your live environment as possible. This will ensure that any issues arising in the staging environment represent what would happen on the site. 

Small changes can sometimes have unexpected consequences and testing them in the staging environment can help you avoid them. An identical replica of production will ensure accurate error reports.

For example, suppose you're planning to add chat functionality to your product, for which availability and the ability to handle concurrent connections simultaneously are of the utmost importance. A production environment would be able to handle it, as organizations spend a lot of resources on ensuring the scalability of their production applications. 

It's generally assumed that if production can handle the requirements of new functionality, staging can too. But the practical advice is to look at it the other way around: If staging can handle it, production can. This ensures that teams focus their efforts on making staging an equivalent environment to production to achieve this.

Use Version Control for Configurations and Databases

Using version control will make it easier to keep track of changes and roll back changes if necessary. You might consider pairing version control with automatic backups of your website's configurations and database. This way, you have a backup if something goes wrong and you can further investigate the commit history to pinpoint the issue while the production site doesn't suffer from the error.

For example, let's say a team of developers is working on a module and you're using a database to store your data. With version control, you can each make changes to the database independently and then use the version control system to merge your changes. By doing this, developers can avoid conflicts and ensure that everyone is working with the most up-to-date version of the database. Additionally, if you need to revert to a previous database version for any reason, you can easily do so using the version control system.

Don't use the Staging Site for Production Work

The staging site should be used solely for testing and making changes, not publishing content or conducting business. 

Regularly update the staging site with the latest content and data from the live site. You can automate updates with some DevOps effort. Automated processes ensure that the staging environment is synced to production, but not the other way around. This will help ensure that the staging site accurately represents the live site.

For example, let's say you're working on a web application and you've set up a staging environment to test new features and ensure everything is working correctly before deploying to production. However, instead of deploying the latest application version to the production environment, you accidentally deploy it to the staging environment. 

Since the staging environment is not intended for production use, the application may not be stable or reliable, so you should never direct users to your staging environment. This could lead to dissatisfaction among your users and damage to your reputation. Any changes intended for user consumption should always be made in production. So in the example above, you'd need to redeploy the application to the correct location.

Keep a Separate Domain for Staging

A separate domain or subdomain, instead of your production domain, is recommended for your staging environment. If things go south, those changes don't negatively impact the SEO of the domain you use for your production site. 

Keeping the staging domain separate from production will also prevent users from accidentally accessing the staging version of your application. In cases of prolonged testing or experimentations with SEO-related experiments, it'll also avoid being crawled and indexed by search engines. Additionally, using a separate domain for the staging environment makes it easier to manage and maintain the two environments independently.

For example, suppose you've set up a staging environment to test new features before deploying them to production and the staging environment uses the same domain as the production environment. Users may accidentally access the staging version of the site instead of the production version without even knowing, due to the same domain. This could lead to confusion and dissatisfaction among your users, as their accounts wouldn't be on the staging database. Thus, they wouldn't be able to access their work. 

Using a separate subdomain for the staging environment (such as "staging.example.com") is a better idea. Users will know that they're accessing the staging version of the site, and they can easily identify it and switch to the production version. This can help avoid confusion and ensure that users always access the correct version of your site.

Test, Test, Test

Test all changes thoroughly in the staging environment before deploying them to the live site. Thorough testing will help you catch any potential issues before they affect your live site, even if the changes seem minor. The scope of this testing usually tests the changes a particular release will introduce into the application. However, to utilize a staging environment effectively, you should set up automated testing with the widest possible coverage. That way, the possibility of new changes breaking existing functionality can be invalidated and ruled out.

Additionally, thorough testing on a staging environment can help improve the overall quality of the application. Furthermore, it can provide confidence that it'll function as expected in the production environment. You can even mitigate some costs and wasted time through automating your testing.

For example, let's say you're working on an e-commerce website. In the staging environment, you test the website's checkout process, payment processing, and other critical features to ensure they work correctly. You also simulate high-traffic scenarios to ensure that the website can handle many users without crashing or experiencing other problems. 

This allows you to identify and fix any potential issues or bugs before they affect users in the production environment. As a result, when you deploy the website to production, it's stable and reliable, and users can use it to make purchases without encountering any problems. This can help improve the overall user experience and satisfaction with your website. And if you've automated this testing, you can often save time, money, and effort on the development side.

Managing Environments

There are several ways to create and manage staging environments, and the best option for you depends on the infrastructure already in place at your company. Some companies choose to set up multiple on-premises servers to get both staging and production environments. Others use virtual machines (VMs) or cloud instances. Whatever you choose, be sure to replicate all aspects of your production environment in staging. This means servers, databases, networking, storage, configurations, and so on.

To do that, you may want to consider a tool to help manage your environments. Release is one company offering easy environment management, enabling developers to test in a sandboxed environment, where they can unleash their creativity without worrying about breaking things.

Summary

A staging environment replicates the production environment, but it's used to deploy and test new code changes before they're pushed to production. Staging is necessary because it allows you to test new features before they go live. This offers more control and a safe testing process, as any issues that arise can be fixed before they impact your live site or application.

We discussed best practices for staging environments, as well as how to effectively manage staging environments. These tips can help you derive the most value from your staging environment.

Ultimately, it's essential to test everything before deploying to production. That way, you don't waste time and money when something goes wrong.