research-staging.amnh.org is the staging webserver for the Research department sites. A staging server allows you to test changes you want to make to your site, without the public seeing, and without impacting the performance of the live sites in the case of database and cgi applications. Once changes are approved, the prototype files may be published to the live server, using a simple command from the command-line. Another advantage of the two-server system is that, since users need only log into the staging server, security risks on the live server are reduced.

Most of the virtual hosts mentioned in the "live server" section also have their equivalent staging hostnames.