Process:
- Moving staging to production environment
- Create backup of the staging site (or dev site if that is where the new site is being built).
- Optional: Create backup of the live site if possible (restore to one of the site’s unused environments if possible).
- Copy the most recent staging backup into the production environment
- Setup Cloudflare
- Setup the website in Cloudflare to pull in any existing DNS records associated with the domain
- Change the Domain Nameservers
- If you have not already setup the site in Cloudflare and changed the nameservers to ours, login to the domain registrar account and go to the DNS settings
- Save a copy of the DNS zone or or cross-check it against the records in Cloudflare to ensure ALL necessary records are pulling through. If saving, you can just copy paste it into a notepad file and attach to the ticket if you want.
- Update the nameservers to use the respective Cloudflare nameservers. This step will cause the website to “go down” – so be sure to finish the next steps ASAP
- Note: If the client has a Tech contact and they do not want us to move the DNS to Cloudflare – In some cases it may be necessary to instead repoint the domain to WP Engine using an A record, rather than changing to Cloudflare nameservers. If you aren’t sure if this is the case or not, check with the project owner to be sure we are adhering to any requests from the client or their tech contact and avoiding any issues that may arise from DNS updates
- Add domain to site in WP Engine
- Be sure to follow the prompts on the screen to sign into Cloudflare and let WP Engine do this automatically
- NOTE: If client’s current site was hosted in WP Engine (as is the case with all clients joining us from FindLaw), you must take additional steps to add the domain to the production environment. See this guide for reference on how to accomplish this.
- Add the www or non-www version of the domain
- Within WP Engine production environment > Domain settings, add the www. version of the domain (or the non-www version, whichever is not the primary being used on their existing site) and set it to redirect to www or non-www version.
- Upgrade the domains to the advanced network
- Upgrade both the www and non-www domains to the advanced network in WP Engine.
- The site may take a little while to propagate. It usually happens within an hour, oftentimes less. Clear your browser cache, or the Cloudflare and WPEngine cache or use an incognito to verify the new site is showing up. You can also use sites such as https://dnschecker.org/ to check propagation status.
- Add the SSL certs
- In WP Engine, go to the SSL tab of the production environment and then order the LetsEncrypt SSL Certificates for both domains
- Review site:
- Once completed, double check to ensure everything is working properly and the proper primary domain is showing up on the site and do a quick spot check to confirm no staging / wpengine urls are showing on the site. If it is, then you may need to update the site URL in the WP Admin settings if necessary or work with WP Engine support to update the database to find & replace any instances of the old URLs.