Webflow staging subdomain

There are 2 types of domains you can publish your site to: your Webflow staging subdomain (e.g., yoursite.webflow.io) and custom domains (e.g., yourdomain.com). The Webflow staging subdomain is useful to test custom code and get approval on your site’s design before pushing your site live to your custom domain.

If you want to prevent your webflow.io site from appearing in search engine results, you can disable search engine indexing of the Webflow staging subdomain.

In this lesson, you’ll learn:

1. How to edit your staging subdomain
2. How to publish to your staging subdomain
3. How staging subdomain cookies work
4. How to enable and disable private staging

How to edit your staging subdomain

You can edit your subdomain under Site settings > Publishing tab > Staging.

Note: If you change your site’s subdomain, both your staging subdomain (e.g., yoursite.webflow.io) and your site’s read-only link will be replaced instantly. Any read-only links you’ve previously shared will no longer function.

How to publish to your staging subdomain

To publish your site to the staging subdomain without publishing to your custom domain: 

1. Open your site in the Designer or go to Site settings
2. Click Publish 
3. Check the Webflow staging subdomain (e.g., yoursite.webflow.io)
4. Uncheck your custom domain
5. Click Publish to select domains

Important: When you publish from the Editor, your site will publish to both the webflow.io staging subdomain and any custom domain(s) you’ve added to your site. To publish changes only to your staging subdomain, publish your site from the Designer or Site settings.

How staging subdomain cookies work

In April 2023, we submitted the Webflow staging domain to the Public suffix list. This increases the security and discoverability of websites published to the staging domain.

Beginning in June 2023, this change will also reset analytics cookies on URLs ending with webflow.io. If your site is only published to your Webflow staging subdomain — and not also published to a custom domain — your site’s analytics cookies will be reset in June 2023. This means that cookies for your site’s analytics tools (i.e., Google Analytics, Google Optimize, and Facebook Pixel) will be reset and existing visitors that return to your site won’t be recognized as “returning visitors” on their first visit following the cookie(s) reset.

If you want to preserve your site’s cookies on your staging subdomain, you can add the following script to your site:

// get all cookie names
function getCookieNames() {
  return document.cookie.split(';').map(c => c.trim().split('=')[0]);
}

// cookies to update
const COOKIES_TO_UPDATE = [
  // these are examples. You will likely want to run `getCookieNames()` 
  // to see what you are using on your site to determine which cookies 
  // to include in this list
  '_ga',
  '_fbp',
];

(function() {
  const psl = '_psl';
  const pslValue = getCookie(psl);
  // we set pslValue to `1` after migrating, so this guard ensures we
  // don't touch an already migrated cookie
  if (pslValue == '') {
    return;
  }

  function setCookie(name, value, days) {
    const d = new Date();
    d.setTime(d.getTime() + (days * 24 * 60 * 60 * 1000));
    const expires = 'expires=' + d.toUTCString();

    document.cookie = name + '=' + value + ';' + expires + ';path=/';
  }


  function getCookie(cname) {
    const decodedCookie = decodeURIComponent(document.cookie);
    const name = cname + '=';
    const ca = decodedCookie.split(';');
    for (let i = 0; i < ca.length; i++) {
      let c = ca[i];
      while (c.charAt(0) == ' ') {
        c = c.substring(1);
      }
      if (c.indexOf(name) == 0) {
        return c.substring(name.length, c.length);
      }
    }
    return '';
  }

  function resetCookieToSubdomain(name) {
    const value = getCookie(name);
    if (value != '') {
      setCookie(name, value, 365);
    }
  }

  // Run the cookie rescoping migration
  COOKIES_TO_UPDATE.forEach(resetCookieToSubdomain);
  setCookie(psl, '1');
})();

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How to enable and disable private staging

Webflow Enterprise customers and Enterprise partners have the ability to enable private staging on their sites. Private staging gives you and your team greater control over who can see site updates before they’re launched publicly.

If a site has private staging enabled, it will require authentication to access the site on its staging subdomain (yoursite.webflow.io). This ensures that only logged-in Workspace members and guests with access to the site can view the site on its staging subdomain. Additionally, if your team has single sign-on (SSO) set up for their Workspace, it will also be required to access private staging.

Note: Enabling or disabling private staging will only take effect after you publish your site.

To enable private staging on a site:

1. Go to Site settings > Publishing tab > Staging
2. Toggle on “Make staging private”
3. Publish your site

To disable private staging on a site:

1. Go to Site settings > Publishing tab > Staging
2. Toggle off “Make staging private”
3. Publish your site