The Staging feature is a part of the “Mojo Marketplace” plugin that Bluehost installs automatically as part of a new WordPress instance. To be fair the feature is still in beta.
The “Staging (beta)” menu item is controlled by a wordpress “transient” variable called “mm_compat_check”. If Mojo Marketplace determines that your site isn’t compatible with the staging feature, it will set that variable to “incompatible”. I haven’t figured out what actually makes the site “incompatible” yet.
The “mm_compat_check” transient has a 30-day expiration, so even if your site “becomes” compatible, the staging link won’t show up. You can fix this if you clear the transient. Start by deactivating the plugin, then directly edit the “options” table in your database, removing both options that have “mm_compat_check” in the name (one is the actual variable, the other is the expiration time). Once those are deleted, you can reactivate the plugin, and the link should appear.
