How to Update Premium Plugins/Themes on Staging Sites?

Question: Right now my site is showing an available update to a premium plugin/theme on my live site, but it’s not showing any available update on the staging site. But if I update it on the live site, then the staging site isn’t accurate. How do you handle this?

Answer: I assume the update is not available on the staging site because its license key has been activated on the prod site only.

One way is to activate the license key of your premium theme or plugin on the staging site by switching it from the production site to the staging site and then do the update.

Alternatively, you could use the WP Staging “update” button, exclude all database tables and all folders except the folder of the specific plugin or theme you like to update.

This would copy over all new plugins/theme files to the staging site.
When this is done and you open up the staging site it will trigger the plugin/theme update process on the staging site.

Important: Make sure that you did not modify any plugins/theme files on your staging site to prevent overwriting your modifications before you migrate them to the production site.

Read more:

Do I need to activate premium plugin license on production or staging site?

Premium Plugins Like Borlabs Cookie Banner Activated as “Test-Version” After Pushing a Staging Site

Updated on August 8, 2022