Cornerstone preview error on SiteGround's staging environment

Hi there,

We have been experiencing some issues trying to update our site with Cornerstone on SiteGround’s staging environment.

The preview could not load due to misconfigured URLs. This could happen if you are using multiple environments and the site URL was not updated after migrating.

We followed theme x advice here (https://theme.co/apex/forum/t/troubleshooting-builder-preview-warnings/14404), to Update the WordPress and site URLs to match the staging URL, but WP Settings > General are blocked for users since the staging copy relies heavily on a few rules that are preset in order for the site to be pushed normally to the live one.

We were adviced to request a ticket directly to SiteGround’s technical team to complete this steps:

1.Create a staging on Site Ground Cpanel with the Staging Tool
2.Add the A records to Cloudflare
3.Open 1st Ticket on Site ground asking to update the WordPress and site URLs to match the staging URL
4.Update the site accordingly
5.Open 2nd Ticket on Site ground asking to update the WordPress and site URLs to match the original URL
6.Push staging site to live

After a few tests this was their respond:

I tried to apply the workaround that the theme developers suggest.

Unfortunately, when the URLs in the database are changed, this causes a redirect loop and the website does not function at all.

It looks like your particular application cannot operate under the staging subdomain under the staging tool.

I tried to change the theme and disable all plugins, to check if the issue is related to a plugin or the theme, but the redirect loop persisted despite that.

It does not seem like your application can work with the staging tool unless it uses the correct staging settings.

I would recommend that you contact the plugin developers for further assistance.

Is there anything else you could suggest?

I’m sorry you’re running into this. We’ve discussed this at length with SiteGround last year and the problem is a flaw in their staging system. They don’t truly change the WordPress URL (https://codex.wordpress.org/Changing_The_Site_URL#Edit_wp-config.php) when the staging environment is provisions but rather they rewrite HTML output replacing the production URL with the staging one. Unfortunately this leaves many different ways plugins and integrations can utilize the site URL unaccounted for. For example, if I run the home_url() native WordPress function it will return the production URL instead of staging.

We asked SiteGround what we should recommend to our customers and they provided us with the info we’re now including in our Knowledge Base. So far it has been working for those who have experienced this problem.

As this is a flaw in their platform (how URLs are managed), regretfully it’s not something we’re able to support. I’m really sorry about the back and forth but at this point I would suggest letting them know the proposed solution was their recommendation to begin with and see how they’re able to reconcile it for you.

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