Updates these days are too frequent and are too numerous for the majority of us. The fear of your website being damaged by every update is always present. Particularly if you do not have a backup plan.
If you’ve ever been in a situation where you’re required to update the theme or plugin, try the new version, include a few little nudges in a few places, install something new or even hand over your website to a technical team to help it, it’s normal to may feel a bit hesitant about the possibility of losing your website.
In the worst case scenario, you could be able to see your WordPress website stop working, and you’re unable to log in to the website’s dashboard in order to repair things.
To lessen the chance and anxiety that your site could be lost totally, The best option is to set up a staging website and test the site before introducing updates to your website.
In this post, we’ll be talking about the best way to accomplish that. We’ll walk you through the steps for creating a perfect clone of your site to an untested site in order to test and make changes and updates prior to putting it live.
It takes less than 5 mins to finish!
Let’s get started.
Table Of Contents
- Why You Might Need to Clone Your Website
- How to Clone Your WordPress Website
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- Before You Clone
- Using Duplicator (Step-by-Step)
- Using WP Staging Plugin
- Final Thoughts
Why You Might Need to Clone Your Website
There are lots of possible scenarios in which you may require to duplicate your site.
From basic updates to themes and plugins to including complex themes, The benefits are greater than the time required to accomplish tenfold.
Certain scenarios include:
- Themes and plugins are updated and up-to-date, as well as testing compatibility
- Themes can be changed, and plugins
- A child theme can be added
- Changes in PHP versions
- Updating WP Core
- Adding additional functions through plugins
- Modifying themes and plugins
- Giving a copy of your site to a technical team for troubleshooting
- Change your Domain Name
- Changing Web Hosts
- There are many more things too.
In essence, the rule of thumb is that if you plan to alter anything on your site, prior to making the make changes to the live website, it’s recommended that you perform the modifications on a duplicate staging site to ensure that the changes won’t cause a disruption to your live website.
In this instance, the term “cloning” doesn’t just refer to the backup of your website. There’s an entire issue that is covered. In a way, it’s about creating a backup copy of your site and transferring it to a different server. It could be on the web hosting or on a different.
In essence, yes, that is the definition is literal is “cloning” Making an exact complete duplicate of your website for the reasons mentioned above.
It is also important to take note that the server you’re planning to establish your staging site on is the same as, or identical to, the live site. We’ll go over this in detail later, but you’ll ensure that your content is synchronized between the staging and live sites.
After discussing the various reasons you might want to duplicate your website, let’s chat about the benefits that it can bring:
- The copy of your site constantly If you’re the type of person who is always cloning your live website, it is likely that you always have a new version of your website every day.
- Be sure not to cause harm to your live website with updates this is what we’ve been saying for years. You’re able to always restore your staging website; however, your live site is the sole one.
- Create a playground to play with new pages and items as with staging sites, it is certain that you will always be breaking new ground for new pages, and you’ll be able to create your own designs without impacting the speed of your website or SEO.
- Handover of tech support for worry-free If you frequently transfer your website’s information to a third-party support representative, then you don’t have to worry about the modifications they make that impact your website’s live.
After we’ve gone over the whats and whats, let’s get into the steps. We’ll discuss two very simple ways to duplicate the look and feel of your WordPress website in just five minutes! *
The speed of your website will, in large part, determine the scale of your site.
How to Clone Your WordPress Website
There are lots of options to do this; however, in this post, we’ll concentrate on two of the most simple plugins available. There are, however, certain prerequisites.
Before You Clone
Before you begin the process of copying your website first, you need to have created your stage environment.
You could do it with a different web host, or the same host, but a different directory, or make a local environment.
There are plenty of instructions online and in other places. However, don’t try setting up WordPress there just yet. We’ll take care of it during the cloning process.
In that regard, let’s go straight to the point!
Using Duplicator (Step-by-Step)
Duplicator is a well-known WordPress plugin that is widely used in cloning or even “duplicating” your website on a different server. It’s free and accessible through the WordPress.org repository.
It’s simple and comes with its own separate installer to help you clone your site.
Before you take the actual steps, here’s an attractive infographic that provides easy steps for cloning your site.
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