Staging to Live Push — URL Replacement Issue
We are a web agency managing multiple WordPress sites hosted on Cloudways and we want to flag a significant workflow issue that causes real problems for our clients.
When pushing a site from staging to live, Cloudways does not automatically replace the staging URL with the live domain across the WordPress database. This results in the staging URL becoming embedded in dozens of database fields including form notification email addresses, plugin settings, and site configurations — none of which are visible or obvious until something breaks on the live site.
In our most recent experience this caused form submission emails to route to a non-existent staging email address instead of the client's actual inbox, resulting in lost inquiries and a significant amount of troubleshooting time to identify and resolve.
The fix — running a database find and replace after every push — works, but it should not be a manual step that agencies need to remember. This should be handled automatically by the platform at the time of push.
We would strongly recommend Cloudways build an automatic URL replacement step into the staging to live push process, or at minimum provide a clear warning and a built-in tool to handle it immediately after push.
This is a common pain point and addressing it would meaningfully improve the experience for agencies and their clients.