You have two different ways to set up staging:
Whether you enable Local Live or Remote Live staging, the interface for managing and publishing staged pages is the same.
Local Live staging lets you publish site changes quickly, since the staged and live environments are on the same server. It’s also easier to switch between the staged and live environments using Local Live staging. Since the staged content, however, is stored in the same database as the production content, your server must have more resources, and the content isn’t as well protected or backed up as with Remote Live staging. Also, you can’t install new versions of widgets for testing purposes in a Local Live staging environment, since only one version of an widget can be installed at any given time on a single Liferay server.
With Remote Live staging, your staging and live environments are hosted on separate servers, so your data is separated. This lets you deploy new versions of widgets and content to your staging environment without interfering with your live environment. Publishing is slower, however, with Remote Live staging since data must be transferred over a network. Of course, you also need more hardware to run a separate staging server.
Visit the staging environment article (Local or Remote) that most closely aligns with your goal for staging content.