I'm helping a friend redesign her WordPress site. It's a total mess now, bloated with unused plug ins and an outdated theme. It was almost 800 MB when I exported it. When I try to create a staging environment in GoDaddy I get an error that "There has been a critical error on this website." I'm able to access the production site just fine.
Rather than trying to get the staging environment working, I was thinking about just creating another Managed WordPress site in GoDaddy then adding the domain to this new site once it's ready to be published. To a relative novice, it seems pretty straightforward to me. I'm somewhat worried about losing domain authority in Google and setting redirects if I go this route. But I want to consult the experts to see what the risks/downsides are to doing it this way? Is there a better way for me to go about it?