How To Clone A Website

If you are a blogger, website designer then you definitely know the importance of cloning a website. today we are going to discuss how to clone a website with the step-to-step guide so you can easily do that. we also discussed How to Copyright a Website earlier. let’s first understand what is cloning a website and why we need this.

Table of Contents

What is the cloning of a website?

Cloning a website is simply means make a copy of a website, but this procedure is not simple as copy paste a website, we have followed some steps and might be using some plugins in WordPress websites. It takes a lot of work as well as attention to perform the task, but why we need to make a clone of a website.

The need for a clone of a website

Every individual may have their reasons to clone a website but we are mentioning some of the common and major reasons to do so. Let’s have a look at some common reasons:

To make a testing or experimenting site: Sometimes you want to experiment with new ideas and new techniques but it involves some type of risk as well. There may have a risk to lose your data and site content. In that case, cloning a website helps you to save your data.
Migrating your website: This is very common for bloggers and web designers to migrate website from one platform to another. When you develop your websites and it becomes mature, then you may need to migrate your website to a better platform or better service or hosting provider, and to do so you have to create a clone of the website.
Changing domain name: Changing a domain name also involves some sort of risk, we may lose data and there is also the chance of misappropriation with our website. (although making backup also works in this case). Now, move to how to clone a website.

I understand the need to cloning a website, let see how to clone a website. I will focus on three important methods to clone the website.

1- Manual method:

Manual method means you do not need any plugins or hosting service to clone a website, just follow the below steps to clone it:

Step 1- Create a backup and download the entire site.

Step 2- Use file transfer protocol ( FTP) and go for the best suitable client like Filezilla and get connected with your server.

Step 3- Once connected to your server, find your WordPress files and move them to the hard drive (you will need your files later)

Step 4- This one is the most important stage, now get access to PhpMyAdmin or any other database maintenance tool with your Hosting account to set up the clone’s database. now create a new empty database and note the name, username, and password for future reference.

Step 6- Again heads to the PhpMyAdmin, Now be attentive and click on the import tab and upload your SQL file for your current website (get your SQL file from your C-Panel of your hosting account)

Step 7- Now we are heading to the final step, In this step edit your Wp-Config.php file which you had downloaded in the first step, make sure saved that file properly. After editing save it, and again use File Transfer Protocol (FTP) to upload your WordPress files to your new server. after doing all these you get your cloned website.

2- Using Duplicator plugin:

This method is the simplest among others because most of the work will be done by Plugin Duplicator. let understand step by step how to do that.

Step 1- The first step is the same as we did earlier, create a copy of your website and download it.

Step 2- Now Install the Duplicator theme if not have yet and activate it. After launching, click on build (To create new server) and you got the option to download Two files)

Step 3- Upload a copy of your site to your server ( the two copies you download in step 2). Now use FTP client and signed in to your server and copy both files to your server’s root directory which is known as WWW or Public_html_.

Step 5- Set up a database for your website clone as every website needs a correspondence database to store all necessary information. So set up an empty database to store your cloned site.

Step 6- Now heads to your C-panel as we did earlier, we need to find “My SQL database” and create a new database by giving any name, now scroll down the page and click on add user and fill in name, password details.

Step 7- Again move to your database and go to add user and locate user which you created at step 5. Now run the Duplicator installer and finish.

Step 8- Now both files are on your server, access your new website through your browser and add installer.php at the end of the URL, for example; https://basicwebguide.com/intaller.php

You can access your new cloned website with the username or password you earlier created.

3- Using your web hosting:

I like this method most as this is the fast of all methods, you have to use your hosting service to perform this process. The web hosting services like “Cloudways” provide you the opportunity to create a duplicate of your website. let see how to clone a website through using web hosting:

Step 1- Go to your web hosting dashboard and click on the server option. In the server, you found the application menu and with a drop-down menu, go to my WordPress. Now click on Clone App or create staging ((under app management system)

Step 2- Select a server on which you create a copy of the website and continue after clicking on create as staging depends on your requirements (Remember! Clone a website and staging are different so choose wisely)

[CLONE– Only copy a website content; STAGING– This synced the whole website so you can perform push/pull actions on both the sites whether it is cloned or original website].

Final Words:

Sometimes, Cloning a website is necessary as making a website. Whether you are experimenting on your site or Migrating your site, a little mistake can do blunders and only cloned website can save you. We discussed 3 important methods of how to clone a website Viz; Manual method, use duplicator, and with web hosting. I hope you understand all these methods and this helps you.