Forced Caching Issues Using WP Staging Plugin
I started to use the plugin WP Staging to clone WordPress projects on a SiteGround shared hosting account. WP Staging copies the project files to a new folder within the root directory of the source project.
Since the clone is kind of hidden there, it doesn’t appear in the project list of SiteGround’s inbuilt caching tool SuperCacher. Nonetheless, it’s files were being cached, without an option to disable it.
I had to click „Disable all“ on the SuperCacher settings screen to clear the cache for the „hidden“ clone after every little change I made to a it’s files.
I contacted Support and was told, that there was no way to completely disable SuperCacher on shared hosting accounts, which would have been my preferred option, since it had brought me nothing but trouble in the past.
Fortunately there’s an easy workaround: After creating a subdomain for the staging site’s root folder, the project does get recognized by the system and is then being added to SuperCachers list of WordPress installations, now allowing me to disable static caching for it.
This adds a few additional steps to establishing a staging site: Creating the subdomain, changing WordPress’s site and home URL accordingly and installing a SSL certificate for the staging site.
An already installed wildcard certificate wont work, because at SiteGround a wildcard certificate only covers installations, that directly live in the public_html folder. They must not be buried any deeper, as it is the case with clones, that WP Staging creates.
