If you have been working on a staging site and are ready to make those changes go live, you can use the Site Copy feature in the Admin Panel to copy your staging site over your existing (live) production site.
This article explains exactly what happens during the process, what gets replaced, and what you should check afterwards.
This feature works for WordPress sites within the same Bolt. Multisite installations and other CMS are not supported.
Before You Start
Before pushing staging to production, make sure:
- Both sites are on the same Bolt.
- Your staging site is fully tested and ready.
- You understand that the production database and files will be completely replaced.
- There is sufficient storage available on your Bolt. It requires at least 10% free space after the copy.
- You are not working with a WordPress multisite installation.
If your production site has recent orders, comments, or other dynamic data that are not present in staging, consider how to handle that data before copying.
What Happens When You Copy Staging to Production?
When you choose your live site as the destination, Site Copy will replace the existing production site with the content from staging.
This means:
- All files on the production site are overwritten.
- The production database is deleted and replaced with a copy of the staging database.
- The WordPress configuration file (
wp-config.php) is updated automatically. - A search-replace is performed so the site uses your production domain.
- Cache is fully cleared after the copy completes.
Once finished, your production site will be an exact copy of your staging site (with some exceptions explained below).
If there is any content on the live site that does not exist on staging, for example, new blog posts, orders, or form submissions, that content will be permanently removed when the database is replaced.
For this reason, always make sure your staging site contains everything you want to keep before pushing it live.
What Happens to the Domain (URL)?
When copying to an existing production site, Site Copy retains the domain already set as the destination site in the Admin Panel.
For example:
- Staging site:
staging.example.com - Production site:
example.com
After the copy, WordPress will automatically use example.com as the main site URL.
You do not need to manually update the domain inside WordPress. This is handled automatically during the process.
Custom domains cannot be selected during the copy itself. The destination site’s configured domain is always used.
What Is Copied?
For WordPress sites, Site Copy performs several automated steps to ensure the production site works correctly.
It copies:
- All files inside
~/site/public - The full database
- PHP settings from the Admin Panel, unless you manually disable this option.
- Cache settings from the Admin Panel, unless you manually disable this option.
If the “Assets” option is selected, everything inside wp-content/uploads is also transferred.
Certain temporary folders are intentionally excluded to keep the site clean and efficient, including cache, backup, and upgrade directories, as well as log files.
Addons such as Redis or Supervisord are not copied. If your staging site uses these, they must be configured separately on production.
How to Push Staging to Production
Log in to the Admin Panel and select the staging site you want to go live with.
Click Site Copy in the left-side menu.
When choosing a destination, select your production site from the drop-down menu.
Review the selected database and settings carefully. Confirm that you want to overwrite the destination site (your production site).
Start the copy process and wait for it to complete. The time required depends on the size of your files and database. As a reference, a 5 GB site often completes within about one minute, but this varies.
Once finished, your production site will reflect the staging site.
The Bolt owner will receive an email notification when the process is complete, and you can view the copy history inside the Admin Panel.
Important Things to Check After Going Live
Although Site Copy handles WordPress configuration automatically, some things may require manual verification.
If you have custom paths defined in files such as .user.ini or .htaccess (e.g., Wordfence paths), you may need to update them manually. This also means you need to check that any hardcoded URLs in theme files or custom code are correct.
When Should You Avoid Using Site Copy?
You should not use Site Copy to push live changes if:
- Your production site has new content that does not exist on staging.
- You are using WordPress multisite.
- You need to merge database content rather than fully replace it.
Site Copy is designed to create a clean replacement, not a merge between sites.
Summary
Using Site Copy to push staging to production is a fast and reliable way to go live with your changes. The process completely replaces the existing production site with your staging version, updates the WordPress configuration, automatically adjusts URLs, and clears cache.
Because the production database is overwritten, always ensure your staging site contains everything you want to keep before starting the process.
