we have a staging server in order to test out plugins and roll out new features and also re designing sites. The issue is that the staging version of the site will be out of sync as soon as new content is done on live site, or a new image is uploaded. What is the best way to keep the staging version in sync with the live one, including all posts, images and plugins as well as the whole database in general.
2 Answers
If you are using Pantheon for hosting it turns out to be trivial to do this as a test (they call it dev), stage (they call it test) and production server are built into their platform along with tools to manage moving data and files around. Plus with Pantheon you get easy but optional Git deploy as part of the deal.
You can test out Pantheon for free as you only have to pay for sites once you get ready to deploy to a production domain. Also, if you build sites for other people you can become a partner and unlike discounted partner rates for your clients.
If you are not on Pantheon, and cannot move, then for moving the DB down from the live server to staging I would recommend using a SQL tool like Navicat for MySQL (great transfer tools), DataGrip (great UX but not so great transfer tools), Sequel Pro (free for Mac, not as feature rich) or HeidiSQL (free, for Win, not as feature rich).
And for source code (plugins, themes, etc) and uploads I would recommend a plain-old STFP client, of which there are (too) many.