A clone is a person or thing that is an identical copy of another. Regardless of your thoughts on animal (or even human) cloning, cloning a WordPress site, i.e., making an exact copy of it, can be useful in certain scenarios and doesn’t raise any ethical issues. If you want to learn how to clone a WordPress site, you’ve come to the right place. Show
TL;DR: duplicating a WordPress site on your own can be cumbersome and takes a non-trivial amount of time and effort. The best way to copy a WordPress site is to use BlogVault. It can make an exact copy of your website in seconds and with only one click of a button. Moreover, once you’re done experimenting with the cloned site with the staging feature, you can easily push the changes to your production site from the same interface. What is WordPress cloning?As I mentioned earlier, WordPress cloning simply means creating an identical copy of your WordPress site to test changes, move a WordPress site to root, etc;. Technically speaking, when you back up your website, you create a ‘clone’ of it and store it somewhere. However, that’s not what we mean when we talk about cloning in the context of websites. For us, the term means creating an exact, fully operational copy of a website in a particular location; that is, a website that behaves just like your production site. In contrast, when you back up a site, you create an ‘inactive’ copy of it as a safety net. Now, there might be a few reasons why you may want to clone a WordPress site, reasons that I’ll describe in detail later in the article. For now, let’s fire up the WordPress Site Replicator 3000 (WSR-3000) cloning machine! How to clone a WordPress site using a pluginUsing a staging plugin to clone a WordPress site is the easier of the two methods I’ll describe in this article. A plugin can save you a lot of time and effort vis-à-vis doing it yourself. For this article, I’ll use the excellent BlogVault plugin to demonstrate the process to clone a WordPress site without access to FTP. Using its staging feature, you can quickly make a password-protected clone of your website. You don’t need to worry about creating a subdomain or performing a WordPress migration, and you don’t need to pay for additional hosting for the clone. BlogVault will host the cloned site on its own, powerful cloud-based servers. Moreover, it’s very easy to use and comes with a clean, minimalist UI. Here are the steps:
Congratulations! You now have an exact, fully operational copy of your WordPress site that you can experiment with. To access the cloned site’s dashboard, go to the URL that you get by appending /wp-login.php to the staging site URL. Note that you have to enter the same WordPress login credentials that you use for your live site to access the cloned site’s dashboard as well. If you made some changes to your cloned site and want to replicate them on your live site, you can do so by going to the BlogVault dashboard and clicking on Merge in the Staging section. How easy was that? You see, BlogVault is the best way to clone a WordPress site. Besides being quick and easy to clone a site with BlogVault, here are some other reasons why you may want to choose BlogVault over other methods:
How to clone a WordPress site manually (Without a plugin)You don’t have to use a plugin to clone a WordPress site if you don’t want to. If you’re a DIY person, you can do the cloning yourself. However, note that the manual procedure isn’t as simple, will take a lot of time, and is error-prone. Moreover, unlike using BlogVault, you’ll need a spare domain name and access to a server, either web-based or local, to host the cloned site. Therefore, I urge you to give BlogVault a try before proceeding. It will save you a lot of time and effort. Here are the steps to manually copy a WordPress site:
For this section, I’ll use FTP, a protocol that defines how files should be transferred over the Internet. To use FTP, you need an FTP client. I’ll use FileZilla, which is easy to use and pretty popular. Let’s get started. Step 1. Create a copy of your site and download it to your computerTo create a local copy of your live site, you’ll essentially download the directory where you installed WordPress. This directory is usually public_html or www by default.
Depending on the size of your live site, it will take quite a while for FileZilla to download all your WordPress files and folders. In my experience, I’ve found FTP to be agonizingly slow, which is another reason to use BlogVault for cloning instead. Step 2. Upload the copy to a web server
Step 3. Export your live site’s databaseTo export your live site’s database, you’ll first need to launch the corresponding database manager. The two most common ones are phpMyAdmin and Adminer. I’ll use Adminer to illustrate the steps in this section. The steps are essentially the same for phpMyAdmin.
Step 4. Set up a database for your site’s cloneEvery WordPress site needs a database to store its content and settings, and your site’s clone is no exception. In this step of the cloning process, I’ll set up a new database for my live site’s clone. To illustrate this process, I’ll use Bluehost. The steps should largely be the same for any other web host.
Step 5. Import your live site’s database into the clone’s databaseI’ll use Adminer again to illustrate the steps.
It can take a while to import the data if your live site’s database is huge. After a successful import, you’ll see a confirmation message. Step 6. Edit the wp-config.php fileThe wp-config.php file is a critical file of your WordPress installation. It is located in the root directory of your website and contains your website’s base configuration details, like database connection information. This file is what WordPress consults to communicate with the database. So, if it isn’t configured with the correct database information, a visitor won’t be able to access the site. In this step, you’ll modify the wp-config.php file so that it contains the correct database information. Navigate to the cloned site’s root directory from the ‘Remote site’ area of FileZilla, then download the file. Modify the following lines of code with the new server’s MySQL database credentials:
Next, add the following lines of code below the line that says “That’s all, stop editing! Happy publishing.”, replacing “newdomain.com” with the correct domain of your cloned site:
Save the file and re-upload it to the root directory of your cloned site in FileZilla. And that is it! You now have a fully operational clone of your live site. When and why you should copy a WordPress siteThere can be several reasons why one may want to duplicate a WordPress site. I list some of the common ones below:
ConclusionRegardless of your reason to clone a WordPress site, note that it can be a slow, headache-inducing process if you go about doing so on your own. You can save a lot of time, effort, and potential headaches if you choose BlogVault. With BlogVault, you can clone your site easily in a few clicks. Moreover, it also allows you to selectively replicate any changes you made to your cloned site at your production site with a single button click. FAQsQ – What is the easiest way to copy a WordPress site?A – The easiest way is to use BlogVault, an excellent plugin with which you can Can you copy an entire WordPress website?You can copy your WordPress site directly from the WordPress admin dashboard (no need to login to cPanel or an FTP client). Your can download an entire WordPress website in a zip file (including your database and files) in a matter of minutes (sometimes seconds).
How do I manually duplicate a WordPress site?Step 1 – Backup the source site. Log into your web host account and navigate to the cPanel.. COPY THE FILES: Go to the File Manager. Select the folder that contains the WordPress source site, and make a . zip archive of it (“Compress”). ... . COPY THE DATABASE: Go to phpMyAdmin. Select the database for the source site.. How do I clone a WordPress site without duplicator?How to clone a WordPress site manually (Without a plugin). Create a copy of your site files and download it to your computer.. Upload the copy to a web server.. Export your live site's database.. Set up a database for your site's clone.. Import your live site's database into the clone's database.. Edit the wp-config. php file.. |