12 Best Plugins to Clone or Duplicate Your WordPress Site
Do you want to move your site to a new web host? Or perhaps you want to create a staging version of your site where you can try out new plugins without affecting your live site.
You can move your site manually, but it is a technical process that’s extremely time-consuming and prone to errors.
In this article, we’ll share some of the best WordPress plugins to clone or duplicate a site to help you save time and hassle.
Why would you need to duplicate a website?
There are plenty of situations where you might want to make a copy of your website. You may need to:
- Move your site to a different web host or server.
- Move your site to a new domain name.
- Set up a staging site where you can test changes before making them live.
- Create a backup that you can later use to restore your site if needed.
- Develop a client’s website on your local server so they can review it before you finalize it and put it live.
You can copy the website manually or by using a plugin. Manually duplicating a website is a tedious copy-paste process that wastes your productive time. It may be a good idea to do it once to understand better all the work the plugin does for you. To duplicate a file manually and install it in a new location, you will have to
- create an empty database at the new location.
- give a name to the new database.
- fill in and make a note of the database login details, including user and privileges for the users.
- find export in the old server and export all the files.
- find import in the new database and import all the files.
- edit all the database references to point to the new location.
- connect to the new server and drag all your files from the old website using FTP.
- change all the URLs to reflect the new location.
- configure the domain settings.
Developers need to do this repeatedly, but doing it repeatedly is cumbersome. This is where the plugins can be of real help to you. With little effort, plugins can make as many copies of the website as you want. Repetitive tasks are all taken care of. Developers can create a template for subsequent use for different clients. It can be especially useful for big websites.
Many plugins will need you to create another website to which your cloned website can be saved. You should keep the following information about the new website handy:
- the name of the new domain
- the MySQL database details
- the FTP login details
12 Best Plugins to Clone or Duplicate Your WordPress Site
1. XCloner
XCloner is a simple, free WordPress plugin that lets you create backups of your site. It can create “differential backups” that only include files modified after a certain date.
You can set XCloner to create automated backups regularly. You can even use it to generate automatic backups before any automatic WordPress updates.
Once you’ve created a backup, you can use it to restore your website or in a new location. This lets you duplicate your website on a new host or a new domain.
It’s completely free. However, it’s a little more technical than some other plugins. You may want to pick a different plugin if you haven’t got a reasonable amount of experience with WordPress.
2. CMS Commander
CMS Commander is not merely a cloning plugin. It does a lot more – it helps to manage multiple WordPress sites. It manages user accounts, comments, and content, copies blog settings, posts blogs in bulk, and installs and updates many plugins in one go.
Schedule automatic backups and save them in your computer or in specified external storage options. You can choose to back up the entire site or just the database. When you clone the site, everything including the current settings is copied. As a result, you will have an identical, pre-configured website that you can use for another project or to try out changes.
Cloning is done in a two-step process. In the Clone Page, first, you click on the icon next to the website that you want to copy. An exact copy of that website will be made. If you wish, you can exclude portions of it before you copy it. In the second step, choose the destination where you want the copy placed. Then hit the Clone button and your work is done. In addition, you can also restore a website from a previously backed-up copy.
3. NS Cloner
NS Cloner is specifically designed for WordPress multisite networks. It lets you take any existing site on your network and make a new, identical site with the same theme settings, plugins, and content.
It’s a great plugin if you host and manage many client sites within a multisite environment. It also works well if you want to set up multiple test sites or produce sites for members of an organization.
Keep in mind that it only works with WordPress multisite. You’ll need the NS Cloner pro version if you want to use it with single sites. The pro version lets you clone between single and multisite WordPress and vice versa.
4. Duplicate Post
One of the go-to options for WordPress page and post cloning is Duplicate posts. This popular plugin is easy to use and clones everything from the content of the page or post to the associated comments. It also offers a prefix or suffix option, to differentiate your original post and the clone.
To duplicate a WordPress post with this tool, you just need to:
- Install and activate the plugin.
- In your WordPress dashboard, go to Posts > All when cloning posts, or Pages > All when cloning pages.
- Navigate to the original page or post you want to copy, and click on Clone to duplicate it.
- Multiple pages or posts can be selected, and you can clone them all at once using Bulk Actions.
5. Migrate Guru
If you want to migrate or clone your WordPress website, regardless of its advanced structure or size, Migrate Guru is the plugin you should consider using. Since the popular BlogVault powers it, Migrate Guru guarantees safe and secure migration of your page without the need to risk anything. And, as mentioned previously, if you would like to clone your web space, Migrate Guru is the tool you can use. No manual work at all.
Core features of Migrate Guru are one-click migration, no overload on site, no add-ons, no storage space necessary, and compatibility with every web hosting provider. Migrate Guru’s real-time status will also provide alerts and notifications about the migration or cloning process. In conclusion and to simplify the method, all it takes are four simple steps and the migration process begins.
6. WP Migrate DB
WP Migrate DB copies your database install from one website to another. You must install and activate this plugin on both the original location and the destination server. You can exclude data that you do not want to keep.
You will have to import the files in the new location using phpMyAdmin. Fill in the new address and the file path in the plugin installed on the current website. The files will then be zipped and saved on your computer, ready for export.
Only a database migration is possible with this plugin. It can handle serialized data by identifying strings and running a find and replace task. This plugin will allow you to push and pull files from two connected sites. You can do this from the backend of WordPress.
7. UpdraftPlus Premium
UpdraftPlus Premium is a great plugin that lets you clone and migrates websites easily.
You might have heard of UpdraftPlus before. It’s a fantastic WordPress backup plugin that we frequently recommend.
The premium version of UpdraftPlus includes the Migrator tool as well as UpdraftClone. You’ll get all their other add-ons included too.
You can use Migrator to duplicate your website and move it to a new domain name or host. You’ll need to install WordPress and UpdraftPlus on both your original and new sites to begin the process.
UpdraftPlus’ Migrator lets you move a standalone WordPress site into a WordPress network.
The UpdraftClone add-on lets you create a temporary site where you can try out changes. It takes just a few clicks to set up the test site as it’s hosted on UpdraftPlus’s servers.
8. FastDup
WordPress migration could be complicated for you to manually copy files, move to a new place, and make it live. But with FastDup, duplicating a WordPress site can be easier than you think!
FastDup helps you create backups of your full site or database only. Templates are also available to set which files to include and which to exclude. It saves lots of time and spares you the regular migration struggle.
Although FastDup is a new kid in the area, it’s composed of innovation techniques behind this clean UI/UX. After activating the plugin, you’ll know what to do and where to click.
9. Duplicate Page
Duplicate Page offers a few additional features that some other cloning plugins don’t provide. This plugin will duplicate posts, pages, and custom post types. Plus, you can save the resulting copies as drafts, pending, public, or private.
To use Duplicate Page, you just need to:
- Install and activate the plugin.
- Configure its settings to meet your needs.
- Go to Pages > All or Posts > All to find the content you want to duplicate.
- Click on the Duplicate This option.
10. All-in-One WP Migration
The All-in-One WP Migration plugin from ServMask is another straightforward way to clone your website and move it to a new server or domain name.
The plugin is compatible with many different hosting providers, as it doesn’t have any dependencies. It also bypasses any file size limits that your web host may have by breaking your data into chunks for importing.
There are a few limitations to the plugin, though. The main one is that it only supports importing up to 512MB of data. This may not be enough if your website is fairly large.
You’ll need to add the Unlimited extension to remove this limit. There are lots of other premium extensions available, too. These include a Multisite extension that lets you use the All-in-One WP Migration plugin with a multisite setup.
11. Backup Buddy
Backup Buddy is a premium-only plugin. It is an easy migration tool that doubles nicely as a cloning tool. The Restore/Migrate page is the place to start your cloning process. Backup Buddy will give you a complete version of your WordPress in a zip file format.
Back up just the database or run a complete backup. Schedule automatic backups. Set up different profiles for different backups, so you can work with the version you want.
Download the ImportBuddy script to your computer. Next, download the backup zip file from the same page as your backups. If you move it to another location in the same server, you can simply copy or paste it into ht docs or a folder. You can use a subdirectory for this.
Create a new database, and enter the credentials while importing. You can then move to another server right from your WordPress Admin. All the URLs are replaced.
If you are exporting to another location, then use FTP. Upload it to a root directory. You can then open the uploaded content using a browser. Using your password, follow the series of clicks as directed on the screen and fill in the URL and new database settings. Test that the website has been successfully installed in the new location by visiting the link displayed. After that, allow the cleanup and remove the temporary files used while cloning.
12. Duplicator Pro
Duplicator Pro is our favorite WordPress cloning plugin. It’s extremely popular, with over 15 million downloads. You can use it to back up your site, but it’s also a very powerful plugin for cloning a site.
One of Duplicator’s biggest advantages is that it allows you to move a site between domains or hosts with zero downtime. If you don’t want to miss out on any traffic or customers, this could be an important consideration.
Duplicator works by bundling up everything from your site into a single “package” in a zip file. This package includes everything from your sites, including plugins, themes, content, database, and even WordPress files.
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