If you want to test out something new on your website its best practice to have a clone of your website in a staging environment. This is a clone of your live website in a place where you can test new plugins, themes, and custom coded additions. We setup staging sites when we are working on client websites all the time, but did you know WP Engine makes it where you can DIY your own staging site? They have a one-click staging feature that would really come in handy if you want to test out new features on your site.
A staging site is something all websites should have. This will allow you to setup features on staging and if some code breaks a function on your staging site, the live site stays in tact. This comes in handy when you have backups of your website running. Say you want to test restore a backup (maybe before you adjusted shipping settings for the holidays). You can push that backup out to your staging area to compare with the current site to make sure the shipping changes you just made calculate correctly.
Last year we started helping clients move their hosting to WP Engine. The simple staging site is one of the features our clients who manage their own sites love.
