Working with the API

Staging sites

A staging site is a copy of your website where you test changes. When you list it, it can use your project’s API keys, and CMSKite tells search engines to ignore it.

Updated 27 October 2026

1 min read

Add a staging site

Open Website settings → General and find Staging sites. Enter an address like https://staging.example.com. You can add up to 5.

A browser on that address can then use your project’s keys. See Authentication for allowed origins.

What changes for staging

  • Every answer carries X-Robots-Tag: noindex.
  • JSON answers have seo.noIndex set to true.
  • A rendered head includes <meta name="robots" content="noindex">.
  • Page views count as test traffic.
  • Bot hits get a 202 answer and are ignored.
  • A staging request adds nothing to Missing pages or to redirect counts.

Server-side rendering

A server that renders your staging site sends no Origin header. Add this header to its requests instead:

http
CMSKite-Staging: 1

1, true and yes all work. The header can only take things away from a request. It never gives access.