Over the past year, we\u2019ve observed a new and particular pattern: the creation and use of WordPress sites that don\u2019t belong to the traditional dev <–> stage <–> prod workflows. These are usually temporary sites that are created for testing, playing, or early-stage building.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To help our customers better unlock their workflows around this need, we\u2019re excited to announce Sandbox Sites, a new type of site all WP Engine hosting customers now have access to. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sandbox Sites are the home for WordPress sites that don\u2019t belong to or aren\u2019t yet ready for primetime. They enable a complete online WordPress experience for the occasions you don\u2019t need to \u201cgo live.\u201d Whether playing, testing, or simply just work-in-progress-client-reviewing<\/em>, Sandbox Sites give you a place to easily explore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The intent of Sandbox sites is that they are easy to start, easy to stop, and easy to upgrade. Even considerations like \u201cDoes this count towards my plan\u2019s site limit?\u201d<\/em> are removed. If you need a site quickly, without the overhead of where and how it should belong, Sandbox Sites makes it easy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Let\u2019s have a look!<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is a 60-second video walkthrough of the in-portal experience of creating, deleting, and \u201cpromoting\u201d a Sandbox site.<\/sub><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n You may recall that earlier this year, we rolled out significant improvements<\/a> to how Local interacts with your WP Engine hosting account. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Well, these improvements dovetail wonderfully into Sandbox Sites! Consider a site you\u2019ve spun up in Local and now want to deploy \u201csomewhere\u201d online. You might want to quickly share something with friends, colleagues, or clients. It doesn\u2019t justify taking up a full site slot on your plan, but you want to put it somewhere. Hello Sandbox Sites! <\/p>\n\n\n\n Almost every detail described above screams \u201cperfect for agencies!\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Anyone may want to create a sandbox site in all sorts of scenarios, but agencies are the real winners here. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Experimentation and collaboration are part of the day-to-day experience of operating as an agency, and we\u2019ve seen many of our agency partners patch together solutions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n As we\u2019ve been building out the functionality for Sandbox Sites over the last few months, we\u2019ve worked closely with many of our agency partners<\/a> to understand what and how they can solve their workflow needs. The feedback we\u2019ve already received has been incredible and much of it has informed what we roll out today!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sandbox Sites are just the next move among many planned for helping our customers level-up the way they build with WordPress. We\u2019re excited to see how you use them!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Q: What WP Engine hosting plans have access to Sandbox Site?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n A: All paid WP Engine plans have access to Sandbox Sites. The number of available Sandbox Sites is subject to your plan level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Q: Does a Sandbox Site count against my plan’s site limit? E.g. Does it count towards the 10 sites a Growth plan includes?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n A: No. Sandbox Sites are in addition to your normal site limit. They will however share resource limits such as storage etc that your plan has.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Q: Can I have a custom domain on a Sandbox Site?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n A: No. Sandbox Sites are not intended for sites that will \u201cgo live\u201d and therefore don\u2019t allow custom domains. You can easily upgrade a Sandbox Site to a regular site if you need and then assign a custom domain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Q: What other limitations do Sandbox Sites have?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n A: Sandbox Sites don\u2019t allow multi-site installations of WordPress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Q: Can I switch or \u201cpromote\u201d a Sandbox site to a regular site?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n A: Absolutely! We know that the biggest and best websites often have humble beginnings. You can easily upgrade a Sandbox Site to a full site in the WP Engine customer portal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Q: Who can create Sandbox Sites on WP Engine?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n A: All users with site creation permissions in the WP Engine customer portal and where the associated plan has available Sandbox Site slots.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Q: Do Sandbox Sites expire?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n A: At the time of launch, no they don\u2019t. Expiration is something we may include in the future to help our customers better manage their plan resources.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Q: How does a Sandbox Site differ from a Dev or Staging Site?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n A: A dev or staging environment has a specific role in the more structured workflow around taking a site through to launch or production. A Sandbox Site is designed to be independent of these workflows. They are a space for exploration or collaboration where the immediate intent for the site is not to be subjected to the overheads of a full site workflow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Visit WP Engine to find out more about our managed hosting for WordPress<\/a> and the tools and themes<\/a> that come standard with every plan.\u00a0Or, connect with a representative<\/a> for answers to your questions.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The wonderful thing about hosting more of the top 200,000 WordPress sites and watching site-building workflows evolve over a fourteen-year history is that you start to see patterns. Patterns emerge in support queries, customer conversations, and developer behavior, and at WP Engine, these patterns have informed innovations like multi-dev environments, bulk site-management features, our Headless tooling,…<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":296,"featured_media":153114,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[437,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-153107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-customer-experience","category-development"],"yoast_head":"\nSpin up, spin down, and spin out.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n
A lovely landing place from Local<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wpengine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/local_to_sandbox_site-1024x647.png\")
Built for everyone. Perfect for agencies!<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
FAQs<\/h2>\n\n\n\n