Manually Clone WordPress Site

This article provides a step-by-step process for manually creating duplicate or specialized versions of your WordPress website, such as developer sites, staging environments, copies, or clones.

By following this guide, you can better understand how to clone your websites effectively, enabling you to efficiently manage various aspects of website development, testing, and customization to suit your needs.

If you need assistance cloning a website, our Solutions team can assist with purchased time.

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SSH into Shared Server
SSH into VPS or Dedicated Servers

Make Backup

CAUTION: Before making any changes to your account, always make a backup!

1. Access the server via SSH as the cPanel user or by using the Terminal in cPanel

2. Navigate to the site's document root using the cd command

   cd public_html

   REPLACE: public_html with your domain's document root if different.

3. Create a database backup

4. Go back one directory
    

   cd ..
   

5. Create a backup of the site files

   tar -czvf ~/public_html_backup_$(date +%Y-%m-%d).tar.gz ~/public_html/

   REPLACE: public_html with the site's document root.

Create Site & Database

1. Log into cPanel
2. Create a subdomain for the site to be cloned to
   TIP: Some common subdomain names are dev or staging.
   NOTE: This step is not needed if the site is being cloned to a different domain entirely.
3. From cPanel, navigate to MySQL Database Wizard and create a new database, database user, and assign permissions for the user to the database

Clone Site & Database

1. Access the server via SSH as the cPanel user or by using the Terminal in cPanel

2. Navigate to the original site's document root using the cd command

   cd public_html

   REPLACE: public_html with the original domain's document root if different.

3. Take note of the siteurl and home and whether the site uses HTTP or HTTPS

   wp option get siteurl
   wp option get home

4. Copy the files from the original site to the cloned site

   cp -r ~/domain.com/*  ~/dev.domain.com/

   REPLACE: domain.com/ with the original site's document root and dev.domain.com/ with the new site's document root.

5. Edit wp-config.php in the new site's document root
   1. Update the DB_NAME with the new database name
      EXAMPLE: You might replace userna5_wp with userna5_test.
   2. Update the DB_USER line with the newly created user
   3. Update the DB_PASSWORD line with the password assigned to the new user

6. Import the database back from the original site to the cloned site

   cd ~/dev.domain.com
   wp db import ~/domain.com_db_bkup.sql

   REPLACE: dev.domain.com with the new site's document root and ~/domain.com_db_bkup.sql with the file path to the database backup created in the Make Backup Section.

7. Use the WP-CLI command to update the URL for the whole site

   wp search-replace https://domain.com https://dev.domain.com

   REPLACE: https://domain.com with the old site's URL and https://dev.domain.com with the new site's URL.
   NOTE: Use HTTP or HTTPS as determined in Step 3.

8. Clear the WordPress cache

   wp cache flush

9. Load the new site in your web browser to ensure it is loading properly