Once the infrastructure is complete, and the content and creative integrated - all the components you've worked so hard to gather and get just right have come together into a whole that you can touch and feel!

A separate staging environment that mirrors your production environment is a critical tool in the launching process. This is a space that is set up exactly the same way as the space your site will live in when it goes live - it gives you an important edge when it comes to seeing how things work (or don't work!) when they're all put together.

A staging server allows the design firm to build the site as it is meant to be built in production. This eliminates the need to recode hyperlinks and paths to images and other assets following testing. This is an important consideration, because once you're sure it works as it should on staging, you'll know that it will work in production. If the site has to be recoded because there is no staging space, there is a risk that errors will occur, that won't be noticed until it's too late.

The existence of a staging environment is a tremendous plus in the development process - one that you really shouldn't be without.