Guides → Deploy staging to production in SGEN

deploy staging to production SGEN — the safe, step-by-step workflow

How to deploy a staging site to production in SGEN

You have built, tested, and polished your site on staging. Now it is time to push it to the live domain.

This workflow walks through the full sequence in the order that protects you: back up staging, put production on hold, back up production as a rollback safety net, import the staging archive on production, verify identity, smoke-test, and go live. Twelve steps from start to finish.

Every step traces back to a SGEN panel you already know — Migration → Backups, Migration → Import, Tools → Maintenance Mode, and Settings → General. This doc cites each panel and links to its reference article where the step needs detail.

This deploy replaces your production site's database and media with the staging archive. Ensure staging is in a clean, reviewed, approved state before you start. Once you click Import Now on production, the previous production content is gone — your production pre-deploy backup is the only way back.

What is this for?

This workflow is for SGEN site owners and administrators who maintain a staging environment — a separate SGEN install on a subdomain like acme-coffee-staging.sgen.com — and need to promote it to a live domain like yourdomain.com.

Use it when:

You built or rebuilt the site on staging and it has passed your internal review.
You are going live for the first time and the staging environment is your source of truth.
You are doing a large content or design overhaul and ran it on staging to avoid disrupting live visitors.

The SGEN mechanism is a backup-and-import: you export staging as a .sgen archive, then import that archive on production. Maintenance mode covers production while the import runs so no visitor sees a partially replaced site.

Good use cases

Launch a new site — You built the full site on staging: pages, products, settings, redirects, SEO. Import that archive to a fresh production install to go live immediately without rebuilding anything by hand.

Major redesign or rebuild — The redesign ran on staging for weeks. Once approved, a single import replaces the old production site with the redesigned one.

Content migration with a clean cutover — You migrated blog posts and product catalog on staging first, validated them, then used this workflow to push the finished state to production without touching it piecemeal.

What NOT to use this for

Small content updates

— Adding a blog post or updating a product price does not require a full staging deploy. Edit directly on production, or use the post-migration tools for targeted content moves.

Incremental changes that must not overwrite production edits

— The import is a full replacement. If production has received direct edits since staging was last synced, those edits disappear when the staging archive is imported. Merge or document any production-only changes before you run this workflow.

Reverting a single broken page

— If one page went wrong on production, restoring a full staging backup is overkill. Use the page revision history or fix the page directly.

Platforms other than SGEN

— The Import panel only accepts .sgen and .zip archives created by SGEN's own backup system.

How this connects to other features

Manage backups

— the source of every archive file used in this workflow. Steps 2 and 5 both live in the Backups panel.

Import a backup

— Step 6 of this workflow. Import replaces the site's entire database and media with the archive's contents in one operation.

Maintenance Mode

— Steps 4 and 10 of this workflow. Maintenance Mode holds production visitors on a branded holding page while the import runs.

Manage redirects

— after the import, verify any redirect rules that existed on staging are now present on production, and that no old production-specific redirect rules were lost.

Configure site identity

— Step 8 of this workflow. The import carries staging's identity settings across; you must verify and correct the production domain, email, and site name immediately after the import.

Before you start

You have admin access on both the staging and production SGEN installs. Editor and Contributor roles cannot reach Migration or Tools.
Staging is in a clean, reviewed, approved state. Every page is published, redirects are configured, and the checkout or contact form has been tested end-to-end.
You have the admin credentials that belong to the staging archive — the username and password of an admin account on the staging site. After the import completes, you will log in to production with staging's credentials, not production's current password.
Your staging archive is within the production server's upload limit. Open Migration → Import on production and check the "Max upload size" shown on the form before you begin.
You have an incognito or private browser window available for public smoke-testing.
You have communicated the deploy window to anyone who has admin access to production, so they do not make edits during the window that the import would overwrite.

Where to go

You move between two SGEN admin panels during this workflow — keep one browser tab on each:

Panel	Staging	Production
Migration → Backups	`acme-coffee-staging.sgen.com/sg-admin/migration`	`yourdomain.com/sg-admin/migration`
Migration → Import	—	`yourdomain.com/sg-admin/migration/import`
Tools → Maintenance Mode	—	`yourdomain.com/sg-admin/tools/maintenance_mode`
Settings → General	—	`yourdomain.com/sg-admin/settings`

Steps

The twelve steps below run in order. Each step depends on the previous one being complete.

Pre-flight on staging

Before creating the archive, confirm staging is genuinely ready.

Open staging in an incognito window (not logged in as admin) and check:

Homepage loads — hero image, navigation, and call-to-action are present and correct.
At least two inner pages load — test your About page and a key conversion page (contact, pricing, or product listing).
Key form works — submit a test enquiry or a test checkout order and confirm it completes without errors.
Redirects are in place — navigate to any old URL you expect to redirect and confirm the browser lands on the correct page.
Site identity — the browser tab shows your site name, not a placeholder like "My SGEN Site".

If anything is broken on staging, fix it first. The import copies whatever is on staging — broken pages and misconfigured settings come across unchanged.

Pre-flight checklist:

[ ] Homepage renders correctly in incognito
[ ] Two inner pages load without errors
[ ] At least one form submits and delivers correctly
[ ] Redirects tested for any restructured URLs
[ ] Site identity (name, logo, favicon) correct on the staging public site

Take a full backup on staging

Navigate to Migration → Backups.

Click Create a Backup! in the top-right corner of the panel.

SGEN bundles the database and the uploads directory into a single .sgen archive. The page reloads when the process finishes and the new archive appears at the top of the list. For a typical site this takes 10–60 seconds; for a site with several hundred megabytes of media, allow two to three minutes. There is no progress indicator during creation — the page appears unresponsive until the process completes.

After the archive appears, rename it immediately. Click the filename text in the row, type a descriptive name such as pre-production-deploy-20260505, and press Enter. The row updates in place without a page reload.

See Manage backups for full detail on creating, renaming, and downloading archives.

Download the staging backup locally

Click the filename link on the newly created archive row to download the .sgen file to your local machine.

Open your Downloads folder and confirm the file is there and the size matches the archive row.

pre-production-deploy-20260505.sgen ← confirm size matches panel (e.g. 92 MB)

Keep this file accessible — you will upload it to production in Step 6.

Enable maintenance mode on production

Switch to the production admin tab: yourdomain.com/sg-admin/.

Navigate to Tools → Maintenance Mode.

Write a holding message. Visitors who arrive during the deploy window will see this text — be specific about timing if you know it.

Flip the Enable maintenance mode? switch to on. Click Save Changes.

Open an incognito window and visit yourdomain.com — confirm the holding message appears instead of the real site.

For full maintenance mode detail, see Maintenance Mode.

Take a fresh backup on production

This is your rollback safety net. If the staging archive has a problem — wrong content, missing media, staging test data on production — this backup lets you restore production to exactly the state it was in before you started.

In the production admin, navigate to Migration → Backups.

Click Create a Backup!. Wait for the archive to appear. Rename it immediately to pre-deploy-production-20260505.

Download this archive to your local machine as well. Two copies — the server's backups directory and your local disk — is your minimum safety net. See Manage backups — Tips.

Do not proceed to Step 6 until this backup is on disk.

Import the staging backup on production

In the production admin, navigate to Migration → Import.

Drag the staging archive (pre-production-deploy-20260505.sgen) onto the Import dropzone, or click the browse link and select the file from your Downloads folder.

Confirm the green file badge shows the correct archive name before proceeding.

Click Import Now.

SGEN processes the archive server-side. Do not navigate away or refresh during this step. When the import finishes, your admin session ends and the browser redirects to the production login screen.

See Import a backup for full Import panel detail and a list of what carries across (and what does not) in a full-site import.

Log back in and confirm content

The login screen appearing on production confirms the import completed.

Log in using the staging admin credentials — the username and password for an admin account on the staging site. These replaced the production credentials during the import.

After logging in, run a quick content check:

Pages list — shows the expected staging pages, not the old production pages.
Media Library — contains staging media files.
Blog or Shop — shows the correct item count from staging.

If the pages list looks like the old production site rather than staging, stop — the import may not have applied. See the troubleshooting section below.

Identity check — verify production settings

This is the most important post-import step. The staging archive carries staging's identity settings — site title, site email, logo link, analytics tokens. You must update any field that shows a staging value.

Navigate to Settings → General on the production admin and check:

Field	Expected production value	Common staging bleed
Site Title	your business	"your business Staging"
Site Email	hello@yourdomain.com	staging SMTP address
Logo link	https://yourdomain.com/	staging subdomain URL
Homepage	Correct published page	staging draft page

Update any field that shows a staging value. Click Save Changes when done.

Also open Settings → Email and verify the SMTP host and From-address are production values. See Configure site identity for field-by-field guidance.

Quick admin smoke test

Before turning maintenance off, verify that key pages look correct in the admin preview.

Open the Pages list and click Preview on your homepage. Confirm the layout, navigation, and hero section are correct.
If you run a shop, open a product page preview and confirm the price, images, and call-to-action button are present.
Check Redirects — confirm the redirect rules that were set up on staging are now present on production.

If anything is missing or broken at this stage, do not turn maintenance off. Fix it in the admin first, or restore the pre-deploy production backup (see the Rollback plan section).

Toggle maintenance mode off

Navigate to Tools → Maintenance Mode on the production admin.

Flip the Enable maintenance mode? switch to off. Click Save Changes.

Production is now live.

Public smoke test — incognito then mobile

Open a private or incognito browser window and visit the production domain.

Test in this order:

Homepage — loads completely, navigation is present, hero image renders.
About or key interior page — loads, no missing images or broken layout.
Contact form or product checkout — submit a test and confirm it completes and delivers correctly.
One redirect — navigate to a URL that should redirect and confirm it lands on the correct page.
Mobile — load the homepage on a mobile device or browser mobile emulation and confirm the layout is responsive.

The incognito window is essential — your own logged-in session may show a cached or admin-exempt view. Only a non-logged-in visit shows exactly what visitors see.

Monitor the first two hours

Watch for visitor-facing problems in the first two hours after go-live.

Broken-page reports — any page that returns an unexpected error or blank screen. Check your Redirects settings if specific URLs are failing.
Missing images — images absent on the public site but present in the admin Media Library. This can indicate a file-path mismatch between staging and production.
Form delivery — confirm that contact or order form submissions are arriving in the production inbox, not a staging address.

If you use analytics, confirm traffic is registering on the production property — not the staging property — after go-live.

What success looks like

Success looks like

A successful deploy produces all of the following:

Production admin shows pages, products, and settings that match staging.
Site title reads "your business" — not a staging variant.
Site email reads hello@yourdomain.com — not a staging relay address.
Logo link resolves to yourdomain.com, not the staging subdomain.
Maintenance mode is off and confirmed via an incognito window.
Homepage, an inner page, and a form all pass the incognito smoke test.
No broken-page reports from visitors in the first two hours.

Examples in context

The three scenarios below show how teams at different stages reach for this workflow.

Example 1: First-ever launch — your business goes live.

a teammate and the your business team built and tested their full site on acme-coffee-staging.sgen.com over three weeks. Every page is published, the shop is configured, and the contact form has been tested.

On launch day, Grace follows this workflow. She takes the staging backup (92 MB), enables maintenance mode on production, takes the production pre-deploy backup (a near-empty install, 12 MB), imports the staging archive, verifies that the site title reads "your business" and the email reads hello@yourdomain.com, then turns maintenance off.

The full sequence takes 22 minutes. The public site goes live without any manual page recreation or settings re-entry on production.

The staging backup panel at Step 2 — archive created, renamed, and ready to download:

Example 2: Major redesign deploy — production held while the import runs.

a developer manages the your business site. He rebuilt the entire homepage layout and product pages on staging over two weeks. The live production site has been running the old design throughout.

Alan runs the workflow at 9 am — a low-traffic window. He enables maintenance mode with the message "We're making some improvements — back within the hour." The 92 MB import finishes in 45 seconds. He verifies identity, turns maintenance off at 9:19 am, and the new design is live.

The holding page visitors saw during those 19 minutes:

Example 3: Deploy goes wrong — rollback to the pre-deploy production backup.

an admin deployed a staging archive to production. After turning maintenance off, she discovered the shop showed staging test products rather than real inventory — the staging database had not been cleaned of test data before archiving.

She immediately re-enables maintenance mode, navigates to Migration → Import on production, and uploads the pre-deploy production backup taken in Step 5. The import restores the original production content and settings in under five minutes. She turns maintenance off and the site is back to its pre-deploy state.

The key lesson: the production pre-deploy backup in Step 5 exists precisely for this situation. Never skip it.

The rollback result — production restored to pre-deploy state:

Rollback plan

If anything is wrong after the import — wrong content, missing pages, staging test data visible, broken checkout — restore the pre-deploy production backup you created in Step 5.

Rollback procedure:

Re-enable maintenance mode on production immediately (Tools → Maintenance Mode → switch on → Save Changes).
Navigate to Migration → Import on the production admin.
Upload the production pre-deploy backup (pre-deploy-production-20260505.sgen).
Click Import Now and wait for the import to complete.
Log back in with the original production admin credentials.
Verify production content is back to its pre-deploy state.
Turn maintenance mode off.

The rollback import takes the same amount of time as the original import. If the production server's backups directory was affected by the failed import, use the local copy you downloaded in Step 5.

What to do if it does not work

Import fails immediately after clicking Import Now

— the archive may exceed the server's upload limit. Check the "Max upload size" shown on the Import form. Contact your hosting provider to raise the limit if needed, or reduce the archive size by pruning unused media from staging before recreating the backup.

Tips for a smooth deploy

Clean staging before archiving. Remove test products, draft placeholder pages, and staging-specific content before Step 2. What is on staging is exactly what arrives on production.

Sync redirects before you deploy. Redirect rules in the staging database arrive with the import. Any redirect rules that existed only on production will be gone. Cross-check production's redirect list against staging's before Step 2 and add any missing rules to staging first.

Run the deploy at a low-traffic window. Even with maintenance mode active, the import puts a load on the server. Early morning or off-peak hours reduce the risk of a slow or failed import.

Plan for the post-import settings sweep. The identity check in Step 8 covers the obvious fields. Set aside 15 minutes after the import to open every Settings sub-panel — Email, Integrations, SEO, Ecommerce — and verify all values are production values, not staging ones.

Tell your team before Step 4. A quick message prevents a teammate from making direct edits to the production admin mid-import — those edits would be overwritten by the staging archive.

Guides

Reference

Changelog

Roadmap