Sleeping environments

Staging and multidev environments stop after 30 minutes without visits and start again on the first visit. Live never sleeps. What wakes one, how long it takes, and how to wake it yourself.

Parts of this feature are still being built. The Not yet section lists them.

Staging and multidev environments stop by themselves when nobody uses them, and start again on the first visit. Live never sleeps. A sleeping environment keeps its code, database, and uploads. It only stops using the server's memory.

When one goes to sleep

An environment goes to sleep after 30 minutes with none of these:

a visit to its address or its temporary address;
an open SSH or SFTP connection;
a job that works on it, such as a backup, a push, a clone, or a WP-CLI command;
a WordPress process that is still running, such as a long import.

Requests for robots.txt and the site icon do not count. Neither do WordPress cron calls and xmlrpc.php, so a crawler or a ping does not keep it awake. An open wp-admin tab does, because wp-admin checks in with the server while it is open.

The environment shows a grey Sleeping label. This is not an error. The Activity page says "Environment went to sleep after 30 minutes without requests."

What wakes it

The first visit to the address of a sleeping environment starts it. The visitor waits a few seconds on that first request, then sees the page. If it takes longer than about 20 seconds, the visitor sees Waking up and the page reloads every 5 seconds.

You can also wake it yourself:

Open the environment. On the Info tab, a card says it is sleeping. Choose Wake up.
Send POST /v1/environments/{id}/wake, or ask your AI assistant to run wake_environment.
Start any job on it. Backups, pushes, clones, and WP-CLI commands wake it first, then run.

Looking at a sleeping environment in the dashboard does not wake it. Its files and database tabs say the environment is asleep. Choose Wake up on the Info tab.

Limits

Password protection and IP rules still apply. A visit that Avaloi would refuse never wakes the environment.
A bot cannot keep waking an environment: one environment wakes at most 6 times an hour from visits, and one address at most 3 times an hour for one environment.
If the server is very busy, a wake answers "This server is busy, try again", and the page retries. Avaloi never loses the environment.

What a sleeping environment cannot do

Cron. WordPress cron does not run while it sleeps. It catches up on the first visit after it wakes.
SSH and SFTP. You cannot connect to a sleeping environment. Wake it first, then connect. A connection you keep open keeps it awake.
Backups. A scheduled backup skips a sleeping environment when nothing changed since its last backup. If something changed, the backup wakes it once, takes the backup, and lets it sleep again.
Promote. The promote preview says "Staging is asleep. Wake it up, then promote." Choose Wake up and try again.

Turn sleep off

The setting is Sleep when idle. It is on for every staging and multidev environment. A premium environment can turn it off, so it stays running. Included environments cannot, because they share the server. Live has no setting, because it never sleeps.

Quick answers

Is my live site ever affected? No. Live is always on.

Does the first visit to staging always take a few seconds? Only when it was asleep. Once it is awake, it answers as fast as any other environment.

Will my client see an error page? Not on a normal wake. If the wake takes longer than 20 seconds, they see a plain Waking up page that reloads every 5 seconds.

Not yet

You cannot change the 30 minutes yet. The idle time is the same for every environment.
SSH and SFTP do not wake a sleeping environment. Wake it from the dashboard first.

Still stuck?

Email [email protected] with your site name and what you tried, or send us a message.