Everyone Needs a Sandbox

When I was a child, I had a sandbox.  I absolutely LOVED that thing.  Now I’m in the digital business, I still have a sandbox, but it’s a digital one used for testing, learning and tweaking web technologies for clients.  Of course, EVERYONE with a website should have a sandbox.  Why?

There’s a difference between a staging server and a sandbox.  Developers usually refer to a staging server as a place where the web technology is SUPPOSED to fail.  This is were we put it through its paces and test it to destruction.

A sandbox, by contrast, can be thought of as simply an exact copy of your current site on a subdomain like, http://sandbox.yoursite.com.

This is a place where you, the website owner, can conduct your own test, tweaks and upgrades hidden from the public and any chance of embarrassment if things go sideways.

In the event of a hack, you can revert from the sandbox.  If you upgrade your CMS core, do so in your sandbox first.  If you accidentally break your sandbox, revert from the public/live site.

The majority of shared hosting plans from Godaddy to 1&1 include numerous subdomains and mySQL databases, so why not?!  You’re already paying for them.  Why not use an extra subdomain and database?

Setting up a sandbox can be a little tricky and/or time consuming.  If you just don’t have the time or you’re not that big of a nerd, look to outside help.  You’ll find a small investment in this kind of redundancy will save big bucks over the long run.