Shopping Experiences Transfer Export Import | CMS Staging to Live with Rollback

About the Extension

The new home page is finished on staging. Your client has clicked through it in the real storefront and signed it off. Now someone has to rebuild every block in the live admin. Image by image, text by text.

The problem

Shopware gives you a way from live to staging, but none back. If you prepare shopping experiences properly on staging, you pay for it in manual work on launch day. Those are hours an agency rarely gets to invoice. And the published page often drifts from the approved one, because a slot, a translation or an image gets lost while copying it over.

The solution

The plugin moves finished shopping experiences from staging to your live system, with nothing to rebuild. You get two routes for the same package: a ZIP file when the servers cannot reach each other, or a server pull where the live system fetches the layouts straight from staging. Both routes end in the same import wizard. Preview first, then apply, and before anything is written the plugin creates a rollback point.

What's in it for you

What was approved is what goes live. The plugin transfers the complete layout tree with every section, block, element and translation. What your client signed off on staging looks exactly the same in the live shop.

You see what will happen before it happens. The wizard shows per layout whether it is new or replaced, how many sections, blocks and elements change and which media come along. If a product is missing on live, the warning names the exact location. If an element type is missing because a plugin is not installed there, the wizard blocks the import before anything breaks.

One click back. Before every import the plugin saves the current live state of the affected layouts. Not happy with the result? Roll the transfer back, including layouts and landing pages it created.

No surprises from edits on live. If someone changed a layout directly in the live admin since the last transfer, the plugin warns you before overwriting it. You decide on purpose instead of losing work without noticing.

Media travel along, but only once. Images are part of the package. If the same file already exists on live, the plugin reuses it instead of creating a duplicate. Image URLs in texts that still point to staging are rewritten to the live address.

Your live shop stays locked. With the server pull, live fetches and staging only delivers. Your staging system, usually the less protected one, never holds credentials with write access to your live shop.

How the plugin works

• On staging you export shopping experiences from the list or straight from the editor.
• On live you upload the ZIP under Content > Shopping experiences transfer, or you open the staging comparison.
• The staging comparison lists every layout and landing page with one of seven statuses, for example "changed in staging", "changed in live" or "changed on both sides".
• You select, check the preview, confirm warnings and apply.
• The transfer overview lists every run with status, messages and locations. If a transfer fails, you get a notice when you open it, and nothing was changed.

Assignments to categories, products and landing pages can come along too, including the content you overrode per category. New landing pages from staging are created with their sales channels and SEO URLs.

Setup is handled by a wizard on the live system. It creates the access and shows a one-time setup code that you paste into staging. When staging is cloned from live again later, the connection keeps working. No fiddling after every clone.

Typical use cases

Agency with client sign-off: You build the autumn campaign on staging, the client approves it there, you take it over with a server pull. Instead of an afternoon of rebuilding it is a few clicks and a preview.

Marketing with a deadline: The team prepares the Black Friday landing page in advance. It goes live on the morning of the sale, with a rollback point in case something is still off.

Servers that cannot talk: Staging and live sit with different hosting providers and cannot reach each other. Then you take the file route: export as ZIP, upload in the live admin, same wizard.

Technical facts for your IT team

• Shopware 6.7, PHP 8.2 or higher. Not for Shopware SaaS or Shopware Cloud.
• The plugin must be installed on staging and on live.
• Staging comparison, package build and import need a running background worker (messenger:consume) for the queues async and low_priority.
• Three own tables for the transfer log, messages and checksums. Shopware's original tables stay untouched, all writes go through the Shopware data abstraction layer.
• Every import runs in one database transaction. On failure the live state stays as it was and media files already written are removed again. A lock prevents parallel imports.
• External connections exist only for the server pull, from live to your own staging, over HTTPS only. The plugin sends no data to third-party servers.
• If your staging system is fully protected by basic authentication, the path /api/ must be excluded.
• Data protection: the transfer log stores the name of the admin user who started a transfer. When that user is deleted, the plugin anonymises their entries. You set the retention period for the log and the rollback packages yourself.
• Separate permissions for viewing, exporting and importing in the role editor. Command line commands and an extension interface for CMS elements of other plugins are included.
• After an import the plugin clears the cache of the affected layouts, categories, products and landing pages only. No storefront code.
• Uninstalling without "keep data" removes tables, number range, the integration created for staging access and the plugin's files. Transferred shopping experiences and media stay in your shop.

To be honest

The plugin transfers shopping experiences and landing pages, not products, categories or theme files. The preview lists the CSS classes a layout uses. The matching SCSS still reaches your live theme through your deployment. It is built for a staging system that is a clone of your live shop. Between two unrelated shops the file route works as well, but product and category IDs will not match and you will work through a fair number of warnings. Try it during the free trial with your next campaign page.

Legal notice

We accept no liability for legal requirements. Please check the use of this plugin with a qualified legal advisor.