WES custom hosting

Staging site

Where to find it

  1. Open your project.
  2. Go to Settings.
  3. Find Staging visibility, choose an option, and click Save changes.

Only team admins can change Staging visibility.

How it works

When you click Publish all pages, WCH builds a static copy of your site and hosts it on your staging site. Your destinations receive their files from that build. Nothing reaches production until you publish or promote to a destination.

To open the staging site:

  • Click Launch build at the top of the project. It appears after your first publish.
  • Or copy the address shown on the WCH card in the Dashboard's Rendering column.
  • Or open Rendering, click a page, and use its Staging URL.

The address ends in /sites/your-alias/, using your project's alias. If you set a Root directory, that folder is added to the end. See File Prefix and Root directory.

Staging visibility options

  • Public staging (the default): anyone with the address can open the site.
  • Private staging: the site has a different address, and your browser asks for a user name and password. Sign in with your WCH email address and password.
  • Off: WCH still builds your site, but does not serve it for review. Launch build and the staging address are hidden, and so is Publish all pages.

Public and private staging sites live at different addresses. When you switch between them, links you shared to the old address stop working.

Publishing with staging Off

With staging Off, you publish from the Deployment column. The Publish and Promote buttons on each destination rebuild the site from your source first, then send it. There is no separate step to review.

Switching visibility deletes your staging build

Switching between Public staging and Private staging or Off deletes your current build. WCH stores public and private sites separately. The switch removes every published page and file, and the page version history on the Rendering page. Archives built before the switch no longer appear on the Archives page.

Switching between Private staging and Off keeps your build, because both are stored the same way.

Before you switch:

  1. Open Archives and download any archive you want to keep.
  2. Change Staging visibility and click Save changes.
  3. On the Dashboard, click Publish all pages to rebuild the site. With staging Off, publish to a destination instead.

Set Staging visibility when you create a project, before your first publish, so you never need to switch. Open Settings, confirm the option shown, and click Save changes. Your team can set a default for new projects. See Creating a project and Team settings and templates.

Staging site and the Staging URL field

Settings also has a Staging URL field. It is not the address of your WCH staging site. It holds your own staging domain in Webflow, so publishing webhooks can tell a Webflow staging publish from a production publish. See Webhooks.

Keeping staging out of search results

Anyone with the link can open a public staging site. If it should stay private, choose Private staging. See WCH Go-Live Checklist for the other staging checks before launch.

Testing your changes

  1. Change Staging visibility and click Save changes.
  2. Click Publish all pages and wait for it to finish.
  3. Open the staging address in a private browser window.
  4. Confirm you see what you expect: the site, a login prompt, or no site.