# Set up a staging server

**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/set-up-a-staging-server/225951
**Category:** Sysadmins
**Tags:** how-to
**Created:** [May 3, 2022, 5:24am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/set-up-a-staging-server/225951 "2022-05-03T05:24:53Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 26

<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![Richie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/richie/32/115110_2.png) [@Richie](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Richie)
#### Post date: [February 21, 2024, 1:20pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/set-up-a-staging-server/225951/26 "2024-02-21T13:20:27Z")

</div>

I plan to create a mirror of my production Discourse by using [the rsync method](https://meta.discourse.org/t/move-a-discourse-site-to-another-vps-with-rsync/43812).

I have a couple of other web sites which integrate with Discourse, so having the dev/test versions of those sites being able to hit and interact with a dev/test/staging version of Discourse would be _ideal_.

Therefore I would only power it on when needed, and I would restore a database backup of my PROD on to my STAGING periodically - not daily and maybe as little as once per month.

If I do this, how do I stop it changing some settings back when I do the database restore? 🤔

These for example, would be invaluable:

> [@nathank](#):
>
> However, you don’t want it contributing any backups automatically (or deleting any) - hence these is turned off by these settings:
> 
> > [@nathank](#):
> >
> > ```plaintext
> > DISCOURSE_AUTOMATIC_BACKUPS_ENABLED: false
> > DISCOURSE_S3_DISABLE_CLEANUP: true
> > 
> > ```

Is there a way I could restore a database backup and then maybe manually apply some settings before starting Discourse? Any other ideas, suggestions, gotchas? 🤔

---

_[View the full topic](https://meta.discourse.org/t/set-up-a-staging-server/225951)._