Working with environments in the Frontastic studio

In the Frontastic studio there are 3 environments:

Production is the information source for the live deployment of your application.
Staging is the information source for development while using the staging backend.
Development is the information source for sandbox during development.

You can switch between environments using the dropdown on the top-right of the studio, as shown in the image below.

This article will go through the best practices when working with these environments and what can/can't be done.

Let's start with some general rules of working with environments in the studio:

The environment hierarchy has Production at the top, followed by Staging and Development at the bottom, meaning that the information available in a higher environment — Production — will be shown in the environments below it — Staging and Development.
Media, Facets, Teams, and Redirects are always the same across all environments.

Production

If you're a Content Editor or any kind of business users, you should use the production environment.

Developers can also use this environment to do any tests with production data.

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If you make any changes to a Live page and publish these changes, they'll be visible to your customers.

If you're wanting to create a new version of your current homepage, it's best to duplicate the default page version. Then you can work on the draft version without worrying that the changes will go live with your customers.

Staging

If you're using the Frontastic CLI, you should use the staging environment. Any changes you make in this environment will be visible to you on the test link provided in the Frontastic CLI.

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If you override an existing Frontastic component schema, this will update in all environments including production.

Any page folders that are in the production environment will be shown here, but you won't be able to edit them. This is also the same for page templates and component groups.

Development

If you're using a Frontastic sandbox, you should use the development environment. Any changes you make in this environment will be visible to you on your local.

We recommend using the Public DNS feature when creating your sandbox so you can share your work in progress to others in the team.

❗️
If you override an existing Frontastic component schema, this will update in all environments including production.

Any page folders that are in the staging or production environment will be shown here, but you won't be able to edit them. This is also the same for page templates and component groups.